Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

I handed the message back to her. "He refers to a list," I said.

"A private joke. He used to say, 'Make a list of the people you want beheaded, Little Sparrow, and I shall see to it straightaway when I take over the city.' "

I felt a chill. The joke had been on Caelius. "But I don't understand what he says about Cassandra. He makes it sound as if she gave Milo the encouraging prophecy he was hoping for."

"I presume she did. 'Success beyond our wildest hopes,' he says."

"Yet Calpurnia gave her specific instructions to do quite the opposite. Cassandra was to do all she could to discourage them from mounting an insurrection. Why did Cassandra disobey Calpurnia?"

"Perhaps someone bribed her to do so. If she took money from Calpurnia, why not from someone else, if that person offered her more?"

I wrinkled my brow. Cassandra had disobeyed Calpurnia to placate her old friend Cytheris. She had disobeyed Calpurnia when she chose to see me. But those had been petty infractions. Would she have dared to disobey Calpurnia in a matter such as this, with so many lives at stake? Who would have encouraged or bribed or threatened her to do so? "Who knew how much Milo was depending on that prophecy?" I said. "Who wanted so desperately for Milo to embark on the insurrection? Caelius, of course…"

Clodia shook her head. "Caelius didn't bribe Cassandra. You read the note, Gordianus. He himself was persuaded by her. He believed she was a genuine seeress."

"Then it can have been only one person."

There was a black wreath on her door. I thought of the wreath that so recently had hung on my own door in memory of Cassandra, and the wreath I had seen on Fulvia's door still marking her grief months after Curio's death. This wreath made a mockery of those others. No doubt I would find her wearing black, with her hair undressed. Did it amuse her to put on the trappings of a bereaved widow? Did she think of her widowhood as an honor she had earned?

Even the gone-to-seed gladiator who answered the door was wearing black. "Hello, Birria," I said. "That color flatters you. It hides your fat."

He scowled at me, then saw I was not alone. It was not Davus who stood behind me, but a troop of Calpurnia's bodyguards. From Clodia's house, I had gone straight to Calpurnia's. After a brief audience with Calpurnia, I had come here.

"I'll tell the mistress you're here," Birria said, and skulked off.

A little later he returned and invited me to follow him. The bodyguards remained outside; but when Birria tried to close the door on them, one of them blocked it with his foot. The fellow was every bit as big as Birria and surrounded by ten more like him. After a brief staring contest, Birria relented and stepped back. The door remained open with the bodyguards standing at attention just outside.

Birria led me to the chamber called the Baiae room, then stepped across the hallway into the garden, looking nervous. Fausta stood just inside the room, dressed in black. Her masses of ginger hair were unpinned and hung about her shoulders. Beside her was a little tripod table set with a small pitcher of wine and a single cup. As on the previous occasion when I had called on her, she indicated that I should take a chair at the far end of the room.

"I'd rather stand," I said. "And I'd rather stay here where I can see you in the light. Black suits you, Fausta. It matches that bruise under your eye."

She winced at my rudeness and touched her face self-consciously. "You've come without that handsome son-in-law of yours, Gordianus?"

"I didn't have time to fetch him. I've come here straight from Calpurnia's house. She was very interested to hear what I had to tell her. She sent some of her men with me."

"So Birria told me. Is she trying to frighten me? I can't imagine why. My husband is dead. Poor Milo! He never posed much of a threat to the state, anyway."

"He incited a great many slaves to revolt. Along with Milo's gladiators, they caused considerable havoc in the region around Compsa."

"Yes, that was unfortunate. But all Milo's gladiators are dead now, and so are all those slaves, aren't they?"

"Yes. They either died fighting or else were crucified, thanks to Milo and the false hope he gave them."

"A tremendous waste of manpower, I'm sure."

"A tremendous amount of suffering!"

"Do slaves really suffer like the rest of us? I'm not sure the philosophers are agreed on that subject, Gordianus. But certainly Milo had a lot to answer for-property damage, lives lost, wasted slaves, not to mention the scare he threw into everyone! But he paid the price, didn't he? He cast the dice, and they came up dogs, and now his lemur is wandering about Hades without a head. But what has any of this to do with me? Since when is a wife held liable under Roman law for her husband's actions?"

"You conspired with Milo against the state."

"Nonsense!"

"You encouraged him to raise the insurrection. He might have balked at doing so, but for your meddling."

She looked at me coldly. "You can't prove that."

"Calpurnia didn't require proof. I merely had to convince her. I explained what I knew, and she insisted on sending those men along with me to make sure you don't try to slip away before Isauricus and his lictors come for you. Conspiring against the Roman state is a crime punishable by death."

Fausta laughed shrilly. "Will they put me on trial, then?"

"They won't have to. The Ultimate Decree is still in effect. The consul Isauricus has the authority to take any steps necessary to safeguard the state. That includes the summary execution of traitors."

She looked at me with fear in her eyes. "Damn you, Gordianus! Why are doing this to me?"

"You did it to yourself, Fausta. Why couldn't you leave Milo to his fate without interfering?"

"Because he was a hopeless bungler and a fool and a coward!" she cried. "Left to his own devices, he'd still be hiding in some hole in the Subura waiting for the right omen to come along. He needed a nudge-no, a kick in the back side! — to get him moving."

"And you gave him that kick by arranging for Cassandra to utter a prophecy of success for the insurrection."

"Yes! And it worked like a charm. What an actress she was! She delivered a performance that convinced even Caelius. It must have been quite magnificent. I only wish I'd been there to see it, but I'd surely have laughed and given her away."

"Where did it happen? When?"

"In her shabby little room in the Subura. She stalled them until nightfall-the visions she described were always more convincing by lamplight, she told me-and then she delivered the last performance of her life. While you were upstairs, sleeping off the drug they gave you, Cassandra was groveling on the dirt floor of her room, foaming at the mouth and uttering the words Milo most wanted to hear. I'd told her just what to say, of course. I knew the images that would appeal most to Milo's brutish imagination. Describe it thus, I told her: An endless triumphal procession with Milo and Caelius at the head, the acclamations of the people like thunder in their ears, Trebonius and Isauricus and all their other enemies in chains behind them, and statues of solid gold in their likenesses installed in the Forum, while somewhere in a gray void we see Pompey and Caesar reduced to the size of dwarves, ripping open each other's bellies with their teeth, devouring one another's entrails in an endless circle, like the worm that eats its own tail. Imagine the dreams that vision put into Milo's head! The next morning he could hardly wait to set out. Caelius was just as eager. They met with their closest supporters, took some with them, left others to manage affairs in their absence, and off they went, convinced that Fortune and the Fates were firmly on their side."

"While I still slept," I whispered, "alone in that room upstairs."