Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

"Yet I never heard a whisper of gossip about you and Caelius," I said. "Such a tale would have been just the thing to excite the chin-waggers in the Forum."

"We made no show of what happened between us. We were discreet. Others would never have understood. It was no one else's business."

"Yet Calpurnia knew that Caelius was seeing you," I said.

"As you say, she has spies everywhere. Perhaps she intentionally had Caelius followed, or perhaps one of her informants just happened to notice him coming or going. What happened between us may have piqued her curiosity, but surely she had more pressing affairs of state to worry about."

"Caelius eventually gave her plenty to worry about. After Caesar left Rome, when Caelius began to press his radical legislation and to agitate in the Forum-what role did you play in that?"

"You think I planted the idea in his head, encouraged him, spurred him on. Nothing could be further from the truth! Do you think, after seeing what became of my brother, that I wanted to see Caelius meet the same end? 'The Roman mob is fickle,' I told him. 'You can stir them up easily enough, but once there's blood on the ground, they'll scatter like dust. For the moment, the moneylenders and landlords hold Caesar and his Senate in the palms of their hands. Volumnius and his sort have rattled the dice and cast a Venus Throw. There's no beating them at their own game.' But Caelius wouldn't listen to me. Just as he'd found me at last-found the passion he'd been missing for years and desperately searching for-so he thought that he'd finally hit his stride as a politician. He was no longer Cicero's errant flunky, you see. No longer Milo's red-faced apologist. No longer Caesar's underutilized underling, fobbed off with a safe, useless post in the government. Caelius had become his own man, dreaming his own dream. I feared for him. I told him so. I begged him to stop, to make peace with Isauricus and Trebonius, but it did no good. He believed he had discovered his destiny. There was no stopping him.

"At last he went too far. The Senate passed the Ultimate Decree against him. They made Caelius an outlaw, and then he had no choice but to play his final gambit. He had been in communication with Milo for quite some time, encouraging him to break out of Massilia and to bring his troop of gladiators back to Italy. I think it was in Caelius's mind from the beginning to raise an armed revolt. He meant for it to begin in Rome, then spread across the countryside, but even his powers of persuasion couldn't incite the rabble to sacrifice themselves in such a hopeless cause.

"Caelius went underground, slipping in and out of Rome like a shadow, often wearing a disguise, rallying his supporters and trying to make alliances-'laying the groundwork for a revolution,' he called it-though I don't think he accomplished much. Eventually he arranged to rendezvous with Milo, secretly, here in Rome. He had the temerity to ask me if he could bring Milo here to my house. Absolutely not, I told him. To even suggest such a thing was an insult to the shade of my brother. So they met in that apartment building in the Subura, the one where Cassandra kept a room. I suppose it was Calpurnia who arranged for Cassandra to rent that room as a way to keep watch on Caelius and his supporters in the building?"

"I think so, yes."

Clodia nodded. "Caelius was suspicious of Cassandra, but he didn't know anything about her for certain-whether she was genuine or not, or a black mailer, or a spy or nothing more than a petty schemer. I think he was glad to have her in the building for the same reason in reverse, so that he could keep an eye on her and that mute companion of hers, Rupa. That was how I found out about you and Cassandra. Caelius's agents had observed you coming and going in a manner that suggested only one thing: that the two of you were lovers. Imagine my surprise! Gordianus, that pillar of rectitude and restraint, indulging his animal appetites at last! It amused me that you of all people should have been stung by Cupid's arrow. But secretly I was happy for you. I was in love myself. I wished for the whole world to be in love, including you. Why not?

"Caelius met twice with Milo, two days running. I saw him the night after the first meeting. He was very excited, very talkative. I knew it might be the last time I would see him. Let him talk all he wants, I told myself. You may never hear his voice again.

"He told me about Milo's fascination with Cassandra. Fausta had told Milo all about Cassandra, and he was desperate to meet her and receive a prophecy. It hadn't happened that day-Cassandra was out apparently, nowhere to be found. Caelius hoped she would be in the next day, because Milo seemed absolutely determined to hear what she had to say before he fully committed himself to the insurrection. Doesn't that sound just like Milo? Stubborn and stupid and superstitious. Caelius was almost certain Cassandra would be in her room the next day, because his agents had observed a certain pattern in her routine-that would be the day that you would be calling on her. Caelius took it into his head, not only to consult Cassandra, but to try to win you over to the cause. I told him that you'd never agree to such a thing. 'What if you approach Gordianus, and he refuses?' I said. 'Then we shall have no choice but to kill him,' said Caelius. I absolutely forbade him to do that. I made him give me his word that no harm would come to you, no matter how you responded when he and Milo tried to win you over."

I drew a sharp breath. "It was you to whom Caelius made that promise! I had thought-" I tried to remember exactly the exchange I had heard between Milo and Caelius as I lost consciousness…

"We should have put hemlock in the wine instead of that other stuff," said Milo. "We should lop his head off, here and now."

"No!" said Caelius. "I gave her my word. I promised, and you agreed-"

"A promise made to a witch!" said Milo.

"Call her that if you want since you're not worthy to utter her name! I gave her my word, and my word still means something, Milo. Does yours?"

I had thought it was Cassandra who had somehow extracted that promise from Caelius-but it was Clodia.

"What about Cassandra?" I asked. "When I woke the next day, she was gone, and so was Rupa, and her room was empty, as if she'd never been there."

"I'm not sure what happened. I didn't see Caelius again, but I did receive a message from him-a few scribbled words, obviously written in haste. I think he must have handed it to a messenger just as he was leaving Rome. He mentioned Cassandra, though not by name; he was careful to use no actual names, with the intention of protecting me, I suppose, should the message be intercepted. He ended by cautioning me to burn the parchment at once."

"Did you?"

Her smile seemed to arise from some ironic reflex, the only possible response to a question so foolish. Her fingers trembled as she reached into the bosom of her stola and pulled forth a small, rolled piece of parchment. She handed it to me, and I felt it still warm from its contact with her flesh. I unrolled it and read, squinting to make out some of the more hastily scribbled words:

LITTLE SPARROW, I AM OFF. WISH ME THE FAVOR OF THE GODS. DON'T SAY THAT THE CAUSE IS IMPOSSIBLE. A YEAR AGO, WOULD YOU NOT HAVE SAID THE SAME ABOUT ANY CHANCE THAT YOU AND I WOULD REDISCOVER THE JOY WE HAD LOST? MY SKITTISH PARTNER IS NOW BURSTING WITH CONFIDENCE, THANKS TO THE WORDS OF THAT TROJAN PRINCESS. SHE HAS PROMISED US SUCCESS BEYOND OUR WILDEST HOPES! I THINK THAT SHE TRULY IS A SEERESS, AND IT WAS APOLLO HIMSELF WHO SHOWED HER OUR GLORIOUS FUTURE. MAKE A SACRIFICE TO APOLLO IF YOU WISH TO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. BETTER YET, START WORKING ON THAT LIST, AND MAKE IT A LONG ONE. LOOK FOR GOOD NEWS FROM THE SOUTH. WHEN I SEE YOU NEXT, EVERYTHING SHALL BE DIFFERENT!