Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

"What brings you here, boys?" I said, trying to ignore the sudden fluttering in my chest.

"News of Caesar!" said Mopsus. His eyes lit up when he spoke the imperator's name. Recently, Mopsus had decided that Caesar was his hero. His little brother, to be contrary, had become a confirmed Pompeian. Canininus and Volcatius aligned with them accordingly, playfully treating each boys as either an ally or a foe.

"What news?" I said.

"He's made the crossing! He reached the other side safely, along with almost all his men!" said Mopsus.

"But not all of them! There was trouble," said Androcles darkly.

I drew a breath. "Mopsus, where did you hear this news?"

"A messenger arrived at the Capena Gate an hour ago. I spotted him right away, and I remembered he was one of Calpurnia's slaves."

"And Calpurnia is Caesar's wife!" added Androcles needlessly.

"And I decided to follow him-"

"We decided!" insisted Androcles.

"And sure enough, he headed straight to Caesar's house. We stayed out of sight and watched him knock on the door. The slave who answered made a great show of patting her bosom and almost fainting, and she said, 'Tell me straight out, before we bother the mistress, have you come with good news or bad?' And the messenger said, 'Good news! Caesar made the crossing, and he's safe on the other side!' "

I let out a sigh of relief and blinked away sudden tears. The surge of emotion caught me by surprise. I coughed and managed to speak despite the catch in my throat. "But, Androcles, you said something about trouble?"

"And there was!" He addressed himself as much to Volcatius as to me, drawn by the glimmer of hope in his fellow Pompeian's rheumy eyes. "When Caesar reached the other side, it was the middle of the night; and right away he unloaded his troops and sent the ships back to Brundisium to pick up the rest of his men, including the cavalry. But some of those ships were waylaid and separated from the rest by some of Pompey's ships, and Pompey's men set fire to them and burned them right there on the water, with the captains and the crews still on board! They were burned alive; or if they managed to jump off, Pompey's men killed them in the water, spearing them like fish."

"Burned alive at sea!" gasped Manlius. "A horrible fate!"

"How many?" asked Volcatius eagerly. The news of Caesar's successful crossing had visibly shaken him, but now he rallied at the prospect of a setback to Caesar.

"Thirty! Thirty ships were captured by the Pompeians and burned," said Androcles proudly.

"Only thirty!" scoffed his older brother. "Hardly any considering the size of Caesar's fleet. His cavalry still managed to make it across. They just had to crowd more men and horses onto each ship, and some of the men had to sit on horseback the whole way. A good thing they had clear weather-that's what the messenger said."

"Thirty ships lost," I muttered, imagining the agony of those thirty captains and thirty crews. Could Meto possibly have been among them? Surely not. He was a soldier, not a sailor. He would have been by Caesar's side, safe on the farther shore. In any case, of what concern was Meto's fate to me?

Suddenly, all around us in the Forum, there was a sense of movement and occasion. I caught glimpses of messengers running across nearby squares. In the distance I saw a group of men gather before the steps leading up to the Temple of Castor and Pollux to listen to an elderly senator in a toga who had something to tell them-from such a distance, I could hear only a vague echo of his voice. From a house somewhere up on the Palatine-probably not far from my own house, from the sound-I heard a loud cheer and the banging of cymbals. A moment later a citizen came running by, shouting, "Have you heard? Caesar's landed! He made the crossing! Pompey's done for now!" The news was spreading across the city as rapidly as voices could carry it.

Then I heard another sound, jarringly out of place amid the swelling hubbub of excited male voices in the Forum. It came from nearby, from the little open square in front of the Temple of Vesta. It was a woman, wailing and shrieking.

From the sounds she made, I thought she was being attacked. I stepped away from the group and circled around the temple until I saw her, kneeling on the paving stones at the foot of the temple steps. The others followed me.

When he saw her, Canininus sneered. "Oh, it's only her!"

I stared at the woman in wonder. There was something unnatural about the way she rolled her shoulders and swung her head in a circle. She held her arms aloft, her palms raised to heaven. Her eyes were rolled upward. The wailing I had heard was actually a sort of incantation. As I listened, I began to hear words amid the grunts and shrieks.

"Caesar-Pompey-it comes to this!" she cried. And then, after a long keening moan: "Like vultures they circle over the carcass of Rome-eager to pick the bones clean-wheeling and wheeling until they collide!"

"Who is she, Canininus?" I said.

"How in Hades should I know?" he snapped. "I only know she's been haunting the Forum for the last few days, begging for alms. She seems normal enough, but every now and then, this happens-she goes into a sort of trance and shouts nonsense."

"But who is she? Where did she come from?"

I looked at the others. Manlius shrugged. Volcatius raised a bristling white eyebrow. "I haven't a clue-but she's certainly a tasty-looking morsel!"

I looked back at the woman. She had risen to her feet, but her blue tunica had become tangled at her knees, pulling down the neckline to reveal the cleavage of her breasts. No woman in her right mind would display herself so immodestly in the Forum, and certainly not before the Temple of Vesta. She shook her head back and forth, whipping the air with her unpinned blond tresses.

"She's called Cassandra," said Mopsus.

Why had I even bothered to ask the other graybeards, when Mopsus was present? "Is there anything that goes on in Rome that you don't know, young man?"

He crossed his arms and grinned. "Not much. Cassandra-that's what they call her on account of the way she can see the future. I heard some slaves at the butcher's market talking about her just this morning."

"And what else do you know about her?"

"Well…" He was momentarily stumped, then brightened. "She's very pretty."

"And if she's Roman, she must not be married, or else she'd be wearing a stola instead of a tunica," observed Androcles. His older brother looked chagrined at having missed this deduction.

As we watched, the woman suddenly went limp and collapsed. I was on the verge of going to help her when I saw a figure descending the steps of the temple. It was one of the Vestals, dressed in the traditional costume of the sisterhood that tends the sacred hearth fire of the Roman state. She wore a plain white stola and a white linen mantle about her shoulders. Her hair was cut short, and around her forehead she wore a white band decorated with ribbons. I caught a glimpse of her face and recognized Fabia, the sister-in-law of Cicero. She was quickly followed by two younger Vestals.

The three of them gathered around the prostrate form of the woman called Cassandra. They put their heads together and conferred in low voices. Cassandra stirred and rose to her knees, using her arms to steady herself. She looked dazed. She seemed hardly to notice the Vestals as the three of them helped her to her feet. I could see that Fabia was speaking to her, apparently asking her questions, but Cassandra made no reply. She blinked like a woman waking from a deep slumber and seemed finally to register the presence of the three women surrounding her. She straightened her tunica and her disarrayed hair with awkward, halting movements.

Taking her by the elbows and gently guiding her, talking to her in low voices, the three Vestals led her up the steps and into the Temple of Vesta.