Steven Saylor - A Mist of Prophecies

"But it was Agamemnon, asserting his privilege as leader of the Greeks, who claimed Cassandra as his booty. Mad or not, she was the most beautiful of Priam's daughters, and Agamemnon wanted her. He had the audacity to bring her home with him and flaunt her in the face of his wife, Clytaemnestra, who was outraged. While Agamemnon and Cassandra slept, Clytaemnestra stabbed them both.

"Cassandra foresaw her own death, of course, but she was powerless to do anything about it. Or perhaps, by that point in her miserable life, she welcomed her end and did nothing to stop Clytaemnestra. Ultimately, it was the god she blamed for her woes. In his play about Agamemnon, Aeschylus gives us Cassandra's lament: 'Apollo, Apollo, Lord of the ways, my ruin.' "

Poor Cassandra, I thought, first punished for preserving her chastity from a god, then made the concubine of the man who killed her family. Was the Cassandra I had seen that day yet another woman victimized by men's war and gods' cruelty? What misfortune had driven her mad? Or was she not mad at all, but cursed, like the original Cassandra, and truly able to perceive the future?

If I were to ask her, what could she tell me about my fate and the fates of those I loved? And if I were to hear her answers, would I regret having asked?

The day after Cassandra's funeral, I spent the morning alone in the garden. The day was hot and the sky cloudless. I sat on a folding chair, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and watching my shadow recede until the sun was directly overhead.

Bethesda felt unwell and was spending the morning in bed. Every now and again I heard the sound of her gentle snoring from the unshuttered bedroom window that opened onto the garden. Diana and Davus had gone out to do the day's marketing. They had given up on finding radishes and were in search of fennel, which Bethesda was now certain would cure her. Hieronymus had gone down to the Tiber to fish, taking Mopsus and Androcles with him. No one had asked if I wanted to go along with them; they all sensed that I wished to be left alone.

At length I heard Diana's voice. She and Davus were back. I saw her hurry along the portico to the back of the house and step into the bedroom to look in on her mother. A little later she came to the garden and sat beside me.

"Mother's asleep. We should keep our voices low. I couldn't find any fennel, but can you believe it-there were radishes everywhere! So many they were practically giving them away. By Juno, it's hot out here! Papa, you shouldn't be sitting in the sunlight."

"Why not? I'm wearing a hat."

"Has it kept that brain of yours from overheating?"

"What do you mean by that?"

She paused and assumed an expression she had inherited from her mother, a look at once pitying and presumptuous. She might as well have said aloud: I know exactly how your sluggish, tortuous thought processes play out, dear Papa. I'm well ahead of you, but I'm resolved to be patient. I shall wait for you to catch up to your own inevitable decision.

Instead, she said, "You've been thinking about her all morning, haven't you?"

I sighed and readjusted my bottom on the folding chair, which was suddenly uncomfortable. "Your mother isn't well. Of course she's in my thoughts-"

"Don't be coy, Papa." My daughter's voice assumed a stern edge. "You know what I meant. You've been thinking about her. About that woman, Cassandra."

I took a deep breath. I stared at a sunflower across the way. "Perhaps."

"You're brooding."

"Yes."

"You must stop it. We need you, Papa. It's getting harder every day just to get by, and Mother's ill, and Davus does all he can to help, but still, sometimes I don't know what we're going to do…" Her voice became grave, but there was no self-pity in it. Always hardheaded, always practical and forward thinking and resourceful, never despairing, that was Diana. She was truly our child, the inheritor of what was best in both Bethesda and myself.

"What are you saying to me, Daughter?"

"I'm saying that you must leave her behind. She's dead now. You must stop thinking about her. It's your family who need you now." Her tone was not reproachful, merely matter-of-fact. How much, exactly, did she know about Cassandra and me? What did she know for a fact, and how much had she guessed, rightly or wrongly?

"Leave her behind, you say. Supposing that you're right, that I'm sitting here brooding about… that woman… how do you suggest I stop brooding, Daughter?"

"You know the answer to that, Papa! There's only one way. You must find out who killed her."

I gazed long and hard at the sunflower. "What good will that do?"

"Oh, Papa, you sound so hopeless. I hate to see you like this. It's bad enough that Mother's ill, but for you to be sick as well-sick at heart, I mean-and you've been this way ever since you came back from Massilia. We all know why. It's because of what happened between you and-"

I raised my hand to silence her. As a Roman paterfamilias, with the legal power of life and death over every member of my household, I was usually quite lax, allowing them all to speak their minds and do as they wished. But on this one subject, my break with Meto, I would allow no discourse.

"Very well, Papa, I won't speak of that. Still, I hate to see you this way. You're like a man who thinks the gods have turned against him."

And haven't they? I wanted to say, but such an expression of self-pity would have contrasted too glaringly with my daughter's stoicism, and not to my credit. Besides, I had no reason to believe the gods had singled me out to vent their displeasure. It seemed to me lately that the gods had turned against all man kind. Or perhaps they had simply turned their backs on us, allowing the most ruthless among us, like Caesar and Pompey, to wreak unchecked havoc on the rest.

"Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of men-and women-will die before this war is over, Diana. Not one of those restless lemures of the dead is likely to find anything resembling justice in this world or the next. If Cassandra was murdered-"

"You know she was, Papa. She was poisoned. She told you so."

"If she was murdered, what good will it do to find out who killed her? No Roman court-presuming the courts ever return to normal-would be interested in prosecuting such a crime, perpetrated on a woman nobody knew or cared about."

"You cared enough to give her a decent funeral."

"That's beside the point."

"And some of the most powerful women in Rome cared enough to come to her funeral. You saw them, skulking on the periphery, staying well away from the pyre as if the flames might scorch them-or show the guilt on their faces. It was one of them who killed her, wasn't it?"

"It might have been." Before her death, Cassandra had been courted by the highest circles of Roman society, summoned to the houses of the rich and powerful who had learned about her gift. Had she known the danger she might face by consorting with such women? What uncovered secrets from the past-or from the future-might have led one of those women to silence Cassandra forever?

"Shall I do it for you, Papa?"

"Do what?"

"Shall I do it in your stead-uncover the truth about her death?"

"What a ridiculous idea!"

"It's not so ridiculous. I know how you work. I've watched you since I was a child. I've listened to all your stories about snooping for Cicero, and uncovering chariot races that were fixed, and going off to Spain or Syracuse to look for a murderer at some rich man's behest. Do you think I'd be incapable of doing the same thing myself?"

"You make it sound like baking a batch of flat bread, Diana. Mix this list of ingredients, bake for a certain length of time-"

"Baking is harder than you make it sound, Papa. It takes skill and experience."