A Mist of Prophecies Read online

  It didn’t help, of course, that we were constantly confronted with the contrasting example of our daughter and her muscle-bound husband. They, too, had begun life in unequal stations – Diana born free, Davus a slave – and the gulf between Diana’s sharp wits and Davus’ simplicity had struck me from the first as unbridgeable. But the two of them were inseparable, constantly touching, forever cooing endearments to each other, even as they approached the fourth year of their marriage. Nor was their attraction purely physical. Often, when I came upon the two of them in my house, I found them deep in earnest conversation. What did they find to talk about? Probably the state of her parents’ marriage, I thought . . .

  But the guilt I felt came from more than long silences and petty squabbles. It came from more than the very major row we had had after my return to Rome from Massilia the previous autumn, bringing a new mouth to feed – my friend Hieronymus – and the news that I had disowned my adopted son Meto. That announcement very nearly tore the whole household apart, but over time the shock and grief had lessened. No, the guilt I felt had nothing to do with household matters or family relations. I felt guilty because of Cassandra, of course.

  And now Bethesda, who complained of feeling unwell every day, who seemed to be in the grip of some malady no doctor could diagnose, had taken it into her head that she must have radishes – and her wretched husband was trapped between a greedy vendor and his own guilty conscience.

  ‘I shall buy you more than one radish, Wife,’ I said quietly. ‘I shall buy you the whole bunch of them. Davus, you’re carrying the moneybag. Hand it to Diana so that she can pay the man.’

  Diana took the bag from Davus, loosened the drawstrings, and slowly reached inside, frowning. ‘Papa, are you sure? It’s so much.’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Pay the scoundrel!’

  The vendor was ecstatic as Diana counted the coins and dropped them into his hand. He relinquished the radishes. Bethesda, clutching them to her breast, gave me a look to melt my heart. The smile on her face, such a rare sight in recent days, made her look twenty years younger – no, younger than that, like a gratified and trusting child. Then a shadow crossed her face, the smile faded, and I knew that she suddenly felt unwell.

  I touched her arm and spoke into her ear. ‘Shall we go home now, Wife?’

  Just then, there was a commotion from another part of the market – the clanging of metal on metal, the rattle of objects spilled onto paving stones, the crash of pottery breaking. A man yelled. A woman shrieked, ‘It’s her! The madwoman!’

  I turned about to see Cassandra staggering towards me. Her blue tunica was torn at the neck and pulled awry. Her golden hair was wild and unkempt. There was a crazed expression on her face. That was how she often looked, especially during a fit of prophecy – but when her eyes met mine, I saw in them a look of utter panic, and my blood turned cold.

  She ran to me, her arms reaching forward, her gait uneven. ‘Gordianus, help me!’ she cried. Her voice was hoarse and strained. She fell into my arms. Beside me, Bethesda gave a start and dropped her radishes. Cassandra fell to her knees, pulling me down with her.

  ‘Cassandra!’ I gasped. I lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘If this is some pretence—’

  She clutched my arms and cried out. Her body convulsed.

  Diana knelt beside me. ‘Papa, what’s wrong with her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s the god in her,’ said Bethesda from above and behind me, her voice tinged with awe. ‘The same god that compels her prophecies must be tearing her apart inside.’

  A crowd gathered around us, pressing in from all sides. ‘Draw back, all of you!’ I shouted. Cassandra clutched at me again, but her grip was weakening. Her eyelids flickered and drooped. She moved her lips, but no sound came out.

  ‘Cassandra, what’s wrong? What’s happened?’ I whispered.

  ‘Poison,’ she said. Her voice was failing. I could barely hear her above the hubbub of the crowd. ‘She’s poisoned me!’

  ‘Who? What did she give you?’ Our faces were so close that I felt her shallow breath on my lips. Her eyes seemed huge, her blue irises eclipsed by the enormous blackness of her pupils.

  ‘Something – in the drink . . .’ she said. I could barely hear her.

  She convulsed again, then was still. I felt a last, long exhalation against my lips, strangely cold. The fingers clutching my arms relaxed. Her eyes remained open, but the life went out of them.

  The crowd pressed in. Diana was knocked against me and gave a squeal. Davus bellowed at the onlookers to back away, brandishing his fists at those who didn’t move quickly. As they dispersed, I heard snatches of excited conversation:

  ‘Did you see that? She died in the old man’s arms!’

  ‘Cassandra – that’s what people called her.’

  ‘I heard she was a war widow. Went crazy with grief.’

  ‘No, no, no! She was a Briton, from way up north. They’re all crazy. Paint themselves blue.’

  ‘She didn’t look blue to me! Rather beautiful, in fact . . .’

  ‘I heard she was a Vestal who broke her vows and got herself buried alive. Managed to claw her way out of the grave but ended up raving mad.’

  ‘Nonsense! You’ll believe anything.’

  ‘All I know is, she could see the future.’

  ‘Could she? I wonder if she saw that coming?’

  I swallowed hard. I wanted to press my lips against Cassandra’s, but I felt the eyes of my wife and daughter on me. I turned to Diana, kneeling beside me. What must my face have looked like for my daughter to gaze back at me with such pity and puzzlement? I peered up at Bethesda. For a long moment, she registered no emotion – then suddenly raised her eyebrows in alarm.

  ‘The radishes!’ she cried, slapping her hands to her face.

  In all the commotion, someone had stolen them.

  III

  The first time I saw Cassandra was in the Forum. It was a day in mid-Januarius. When I count the months on my fingers, I realize that from the first day I saw her to the last, not quite seven months passed. So brief a period! Yet in some ways it seems I knew her for a lifetime.

  I can place the date precisely, because that was the day word reached Rome that Caesar had successfully crossed the Adriatic Sea from Brundisium to the coast of northern Greece. For days, all Rome had been holding its breath to learn the outcome of that bold gambit. The grey-bearded, self-styled sages who passed their days gossiping and arguing in the Forum all agreed, whether they favoured Caesar or Pompey, that Caesar was mad to attempt a naval crossing in winter, and madder still to attempt such a thing when everyone knew that Pompey had the superior fleet and ruled the Adriatic. A sudden storm could send Caesar and all his soldiers to the bottom of the sea in a matter of minutes. Or, in clear weather, Caesar’s fleet was likely to be outmanoeuvered by Pompey’s and destroyed before they could reach the other side. Yet Caesar, having settled affairs in Rome to his liking, was determined to carry the battle to Pompey, and to do that he had to convey his troops across the water.

  All through the previous year, from the day he crossed the Rubicon and drove Pompey in a panic out of Italy, Caesar had campaigned to secure his mastery of the West – mustering troops from his stronghold in Gaul; destroying the Pompeian forces in Spain; laying siege to the seaport of Massilia, whose inhabitants had sided with Pompey; and arranging to have himself declared temporary dictator so as to set up magistrates of his choosing in Rome. Meanwhile, Pompey, driven in confusion and disarray from Rome, had been biding his time across the water in Greece, insisting that he and his fellow exiles constituted the true government of Rome, compelling Eastern potentates to send him massive contributions of money and vast numbers of troops, and building up a huge navy that he stationed in the Adriatic with the express purpose of keeping Caesar in Italy until Pompey was ready to face him.

  At the outset of that fateful year, which of these rivals found himself in the stronger position? That question wa
s argued endlessly by those of us who frequented the Forum in those uncertain days. We sat under the weak winter sun on the steps of the treasury (plundered by Caesar to pay for his troops) or, as on that particular day, we found a spot out of the wind near the Temple of Vesta and discussed the issues of the day. I suppose I must say ‘us’ and ‘we,’ including myself in that group of tireless chin-waggers, although I opened my mouth less frequently than most. Mostly I listened, and thought what a useless lot of know-nothings we all were, too old or frail or crippled to have been compelled to take up arms by either side, and not rich enough to have been extorted by either side to hand over gold or gladiators to their cause. Overlooked by the warlords, we spent our days idling in the Forum, expounding our opinions on the latest rumours, arguing and insulting one another, gnashing our teeth while we helplessly waited for the world we had known all our lives to come to an end.

  ‘What does it matter if Caesar’s won the West, when all the wealth of Asia and the grain of Egypt are at Pompey’s disposal?’ This came from a mild-mannered fellow called Manlius, who seemed equally distressed at the impending destruction of either side in the conflict. Manlius hated violence. ‘I don’t see why Caesar’s so eager to make the crossing. He’ll only be stepping into the trap Pompey’s laid for him. The slaughter will be horrific!’

  ‘Why is Caesar eager to cross? That’s plain enough. Once it comes to a head-on confrontation, sword against sword, Caesar’s got the clear advantage.’ So declared one-armed Canininus who, if his tales of combat were true, had more fighting experience than the rest of us combined; he had lost his right arm fighting for Caesar in Gaul and had received a generous retirement from his grateful imperator. ‘Caesar’s men are battle-hardened from constant fighting. Years and years spent conquering the Gauls, then the march on Rome, then the mad chase down to Brundisium – Pompey barely slipped out of that noose! – and most recently, that little foray in Spain to put an end to Caesar’s enemies there.’

  ‘And don’t forget the siege of Massilia!’ This came from my friend Hieronymus, a Massilian of Greek descent and the only one of the group who was not a Roman citizen. The others suffered his presence partly because I was his patron, but also because they were a little in awe of him. A cruel fate had led to his selection by the priests of Massilia to serve as the city’s scapegoat during the siege by Caesar. It had been his role to take on the sins of the whole city, and at some critical juncture, by his death, to save the city from destruction. Massilia had indeed been spared from destruction, but a strange twist of fortune had spared Hieronymus from his fate, and he had ended up in Rome living in my house. Hieronymus was tall and physically striking, with a curious demeanour. Having begun life as the heir of one of Massilia’s more powerful families, but having spent most of his life as a beggar, he combined the haughtiness of a fallen aristocrat with the crafty pragmatism of a streetwise survivor. He often played referee in our little group, since he favoured neither Caesar nor Pompey.

  Canininus snorted. ‘The siege of Massilia! I’d already forgotten about it. Massilia was nothing more than a pimple on Gaul’s butt! Caesar simply dispatched Trebonius to pop it open before it could fester.’

  Hieronymus raised an eyebrow. How he had despised his native city while he lived and very nearly died there! Since he had left Massilia, I never once heard him express a sentimental longing for the place. Still, it rankled him to hear a Roman express contempt for the city of his Greek forefathers.

  ‘If “squeezing the pimple” of Massilia, as you put it, was such a smallish thing,’ he said dryly, in slightly stilted Latin, ‘then why did Caesar reward Trebonius by making him city praetor for the year and charge him with enforcing Caesar’s own plan to shore up the Roman economy? Such an important task is handed by a man like Caesar only to one who has shown his true mettle. I think that Caesar must have rated the taking of Massilia a far more important achievement than you do, my friend.’

  ‘In the first place,’ snapped Canininus, ‘Caesar didn’t “make” Trebonius city praetor, the voters did.’

  This met with catcalls from the Pompeians in the group. ‘Nonsense!’ said the most vocal of them, Volcatius, who had a surprisingly strong voice for such an old man. ‘The only voters left in Rome are the common rabble, who’ll cast their lots however Caesar tells them to. Pompey and all the Best People ran for their lives when Caesar crossed the Rubicon – except for those who couldn’t bear the journey, like myself. How can any so-called election held under such circumstances constitute a true vote of the people? The last elections were a farce and a scandal, a mime show put on for the sole purpose of putting Caesar’s handpicked men in office. The whole process was an illegal and illegitimate—’

  ‘Oh, please, Volcatius, not all this again!’ groaned Canininus. ‘You’ll still be whining about the last elections when it comes time to hold the next.’

  ‘If the next round is as corrupt and meaningless as the last, I won’t keep silent!’

  ‘Corrupt, maybe’ – Canininus shrugged and smirked – ‘but hardly meaningless. The fact of the matter is that Rome has a government in place, and that government is running the city, whether you like it or not. Get used to it and move on!’ Canininus laughed spitefully, along with some of the more vehement of the Caesarian faction. ‘But back to the point I was trying to make before we became distracted by politics: Caesar holds the military advantage because his men are primed and ready to fight.’

  Mild-mannered Manlius, who had started the whole exchange, objected. ‘You say Caesar’s men are battle-hardened, but aren’t they battle-weary as well? Some of them staged a revolt while Caesar was on the way back from Spain—’

  ‘Yes, and Caesar promptly put the ringleaders to death and rallied the rest to his side,’ said Canininus. ‘He knows how to handle a mutiny; he’s a born leader of men. You, Manlius, never having been a soldier, wouldn’t understand such things.’

  ‘But Pompey’s had almost a year to catch his breath and gather his forces,’ observed Manlius, ignoring Canininus’s insults. ‘They’ll be fresh and unscathed. There must be some advantage in that.’

  ‘They’ll be soft from all that idle waiting, if you ask me,’ said Canininus.

  ‘But what about Pompey’s superior numbers?’ said Manlius. ‘Above and beyond his Roman legions, they say Pompey’s gathered hundreds of archers from Crete and Syria, slingers from Thessaly, thousands of cavalrymen from Alexandria—’

  ‘We know about Pompey’s forces only from rumours. People always inflate the actual numbers,’ said Canininus.

  ‘But Pompey’s fleet isn’t a rumour,’ observed Hieronymus. ‘Surely that’s real. People have seen galleys sailing into the Adriatic Sea for months, hundreds of them arriving from all over the eastern Mediterranean. Battle-hardened or battle-weary makes no difference if Caesar can’t get his men across to the other side.’

  ‘His timing could hardly be worse,’ observed Volcatius the Pompeian, smiling grimly. ‘Winter’s arrived. Boreas can blow a storm from the north and whip the Adriatic into a seething cauldron before a ship’s captain has time to utter a prayer to Neptune. They say Caesar consulted the auguries before he left Rome, and all signs boded against him. Birds were seen flying north instead of south, and a sparrow attacked a vulture – bad omens! But Caesar hushed up the augurs before his troops could hear about them and raise another mutiny.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ said Canininus, ‘a blasphemous lie!’ He lurched towards Volcatius, but some of the others held him back. Hieronymus raised an eyebrow at the spectacle of a truculent, one-armed Roman attempting to physically attack the oldest greybeard in the group.

  All this time I said nothing. In the contest between Pompey and Caesar, I had so far managed to keep myself neutral – more or less. Like virtually every other Roman citizen, especially those who played any part whatsoever in the city’s public life, I had strong ties to both sides. If anything, my loyalties and animosities were more conflicted and tortuously intertwined
than most because of the sort of work I had done all my life – playing the hound for advocates like Cicero, digging up the truth about powerful and not-so-powerful men accused of everything from deflowering a Vestal Virgin to murdering their own fathers. I had met and had dealings with both Pompey and Caesar, as well as many of their confederates. I had seen them at their best and their worst. The idea that Rome’s fate must inevitably fall into the hands of one or the other – that either Caesar or Pompey would ultimately become a king or something very close to it – filled me with dread. I attached no sentimentality to the old way of doing things, to the doddering, mean-spirited, greedy, frequently stupid manoeuverings of the Roman Senate and the unruly republic over which they presided. But of one thing I was certain: Roman citizens were not born to serve a king – at least, not Roman citizens of my generation. The men of the younger generation seemed to have other ideas . . .

  My thoughts had led me, as they often did in those days, to Meto.

  It was for Meto that I had gone to Massilia the previous year, seeking news of my adopted son’s fate; an anonymous message had informed me of his death in that city while spying for Caesar. How Meto loved Caesar, whom he had served for many years in Gaul! Having been born a slave, Meto could never become an officer like Caesar’s other lieutenants, but he had become indispensable to his imperator nonetheless, serving him as a private secretary, transcribing his memoirs, sharing his quarters – sharing his bed, some said. In Massilia, I had found Meto alive, after all; but the play of events had so disgusted me that I turned my back on Meto, and on Caesar. I had spoken words that could never be taken back. I had publicly disowned Meto and declared that he was no longer my son.