Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

"Well!" said Canininus. "What do you make of that?"

"Perhaps the old virgin wants to ask the young madwoman what it's like to take a man," said Volcatius, leering. "I'll bet that one's had more than her share of men between her legs!"

"Who knows what women talk about when there aren't any men around?" said Manlius.

"Who cares?" said Canininus. "Now that Caesar's about to give Pompey a good thrashing…"

And with that, the conversation turned away from the madwoman, for now, at last, there was the fresh news of Caesar's crossing to give us men something to talk about.

Later that day, at the evening meal, I happened to mention the incident of the madwoman. The family was gathered in the dining room. Shutters were drawn to keep out the cold air from the garden at the center of the house, and a brazier had been lit to heat the room. Bethesda and I shared a couch. Davus and Diana shared the one to our left. Hieronymus reclined alone on the couch to our right.

"Yes, yes, the woman called Cassandra," said Bethesda, putting down her bowl of chick pea soup and nodding. This was before her malady set in, when her appetite was still strong. The soup smelled strongly of black pepper. "I've seen her down in the marketplace."

"Have you? How long has she been about?"

Bethesda shrugged. "Not long. Perhaps a month."

"Have you seen her experience one of these fits?"

"Oh, yes. A bit unnerving the first time you see it. After it passes, she doesn't seem to know what's happened. She gradually comes to her senses and carries on with whatever she was doing before. Begging for alms, usually."

"No one helps her?"

"What's to be done? Some people are frightened by her and move away. Others want to hear what she says and move closer. They say she utters prophecies when she's like that, but I can't make sense of the noises she makes."

"Why didn't you ever mention her to me?"

"What possible interest could you have in such a wretched woman, Husband?" asked Bethesda, lifting her bowl of soup to take another sip.

"But where does she come from? Has she no family? How long has she been experiencing these spells?"

"If you were to ask after every odd character who wanders about the markets nowadays begging for scraps, you should find yourself very busy indeed, Husband. These are hard times. Maimed soldiers, widows, farmers, and shopkeepers who've lost everything to greedy creditors-there's no end to the beggars and vagrants. Cassandra's just one more."

"Mother's right," said Diana. "Sometimes you see whole families wandering about with no place to go, especially down by the river. You feel sorry for them, of course, but what can anyone do? And some of them are dangerous. They look dangerous, anyway. That's why I always take Davus along when we go to the markets."

"Victims of the war," I said, shaking my head. "It was the same when I was your age, Diana, during the first civil war. Refugees from the countryside, runaway slaves, orphans running wild in the streets. Of course, things got even worse after the war." I was remembering Sulla's bloody dictatorship and the heads of his enemies mounted on spikes all over the Forum. "Who named this woman Cassandra, anyway?" I asked, wanting to change the subject.

"Some wag in the market, I imagine," said Bethesda.

"People give nick names to the more colorful characters," noted Davus. "There's one they call Cerberus because he barks like a dog; a fellow they call Cyclops because he's got only one eye; and a woman they called the Gorgon because she's so ugly."

"She's not that ugly," objected Diana.

"Oh, yes she is," insisted Davus. "She's as ugly as Cassandra is beautiful."

"And there are even those," said Diana, raising an eyebrow but snuggling closer to him, "who call a certain fellow 'mighty Hercules' behind his back."

"No!" said Davus.

"Oh, yes, Husband. I've heard them: admiring women; envious men." She smiled and reached up to squeeze one of his bulging biceps. Davus blushed and assumed a particularly stupid expression.

I cleared my throat. "The original Cassandra was a Trojan princess, as I recall."

"Indeed she was," said Hieronymus, ready to assert his authority on the subject. As a boy he had received a fine Greek education at one of the renowned academies for which Massilia was famous. He could recite long passages from the Iliad and knew many of the Greek tragedies by heart.

"Cassandra was the fairest daughter of King Priam and Queen He cuba," he said, "and she was the sister of Paris, the prince who started all the trouble by stealing Helen and carrying her back to Troy. Cassandra could foretell the future. That was her terrible curse."

"But why call it a curse?" asked Diana. "I should think that knowing the future would be rather useful. I could tell whether or not I'd be able to find anything decent to buy at the markets, instead of trekking down there only to come back empty-handed."

"Ah, but you see, there's the rub," said Hieronymus. "Knowing the future doesn't mean that you can alter it. Suppose in the morning you had a vision of yourself down at the markets later that afternoon finding not a thing to buy. You'd still be destined to make that trip down to the market, only now you'd know ahead of time that you were doomed to accomplish nothing."

"And that would be doubly frustrating," acknowledged Diana.

Hieronymus nodded. "Foreknowledge is a curse. Imagine knowing the circumstances of your own death, as Cassandra did, and being able to do nothing about it."

Davus frowned. "Imagine knowing ahead of time your greatest joys as well. Wouldn't that spoil them? Everyone loves a good surprise, even small surprises. When someone tells you a story, you don't want to guess the ending beforehand. You want to be surprised." Every now and then Davus said something to make me seriously doubt that he was as simple as he looked. "But how did the Trojan Cassandra come to have this gift, or curse?" he said. "Was she born with it?"

"No, but she had it from a very early age," said Hieronymus. "When she was only a small child, her parents left her alone in the sanctuary of Apollo at a place called Thymbra, near Troy. When Priam and He cuba returned, they found Cassandra entwined by two serpents flicking their tongues in the child's ears. Afterward, Cassandra was able to understand the divine sounds of nature, especially the voices of birds, which told her of the future. But the child kept this gift to herself, not trusting it and uncertain of how to use it. When she grew older, she returned on her own to Thymbra and spent a night alone in the sanctuary, hoping for guidance from Apollo.

"The god appeared to her in human form. Cassandra was beautiful. Apollo wanted her. He made a deal with her: in return for his instruction, Cassandra would allow him to make love to her, and she would bear him a child. Cassandra agreed. Apollo was as good as his word. That night he initiated her into the arts of prophecy. But afterward, when he moved to touch her, she resisted. When he embraced her, she struggled and fought against him. Who knows why? Perhaps he overawed her. Perhaps she feared the agony of giving birth to a demigod. Apollo was insulted. He grew furious. Cassandra was afraid he would strip her of the gift of prophecy, but he did something far worse: he ordained that no one should ever believe her prophecies.

"Poor Cassandra! As one calamity after another befell Troy, she saw them all coming and tried to warn her loved ones, but no one would listen to her. King Priam thought she was mad and locked her away. Perhaps in the end she truly was mad, tormented to distraction by the curse Apollo had put upon her.

"Of course, everyone knows about the end of Troy-by the stratagem of hiding in a giant horse the Greeks gained access to the city and then torched it, killing the men and taking the women into slavery. During the sack of the city, Cassandra fled to the sanctuary of Athena and embraced the statue of the goddess as a suppliant. Little good that did her; Athena had no sympathy for any Trojan. Ajax broke into the temple and dragged Cassandra from the statue, tearing her fingers from the cold marble. He raped her there in the sanctuary.