Pompey. A year had passed since then. I had to wonder if Cicero was now regretting his decision.
I had known Cicero for over thirty years. My assistance in the murder trial that made his early reputation had done much to further my own fortunes. It was not long after I first met him that he married. His wife, Terentia, ten years his junior, had come from a family of considerable social standing and brought with her a substantial dowry. She was said to be an excellent household manager and devoutly religious. Unlike the wives of many powerful men, she took no interest in legal matters or affairs of state. While the fortunes of the Republic ebbed and flowed within the walls of Cicero's house, and the fates of the accused men he represented hung in the balance, she went about her duties of honoring family ancestors, making sacrifices to household gods, and furthering the social advancement of their two children.
In all the times I had visited Cicero, I had exchanged only a few words with Terentia. On the rare occasions when circumstances obliged her to speak to me, she had been polite but haughty, projecting the unmistakable message that my social standing was too insignificant to warrant more than the bare minimum of conversation. I think she found it unfortunate that her husband had to deal with a character as unsavory as myself.
The last time I had been in the house, Caesar had just crossed the Rubicon, and Cicero and Terentia had been frantically preparing to leave Rome, ordering secretaries to pack up scrolls in the library and issuing last- minute instructions to the slaves who would look after the house in their absence. On this day the house was almost ominously quiet and still.
Davus and I waited in the foyer only a short time before Terentia herself appeared. She wore a simple yellow stola and no jewelry. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun, a severe style that suited her austerely handsome face.
'Gordianus,' she said, giving me a curt nod of recognition. 'Isn't this your son-in-law?'
'Yes, this is Davus,' I said.
Terentia appraised him coolly. She herself had so far been notoriously unlucky with sons-in-law. Her daughter, Tullia, still in her twenties, had already been once widowed and once divorced and was now on her third marriage, to a dissolute but dashing young aristocrat named Dolabella. The betrothal had taken place while Cicero was off governing a province and without his approval. Dolabella had apparently swept both mother and daughter off their feet. As I watched Terentia's eyes linger on my brawny son-in-law a little longer than necessary, I gathered that she was not immune to male charms. Cicero himself was said to have been heartbroken by the marriage, having once defended Dolabella on a murder charge and knowing what a vicious character the fellow was. To compound Cicero's embarrassment, Dolabella had since taken up arms for Caesar; he had been put in charge of Caesar's fleet in the Adriatic, where he had consistently been outmaneuvered and outnumbered by Pompey's navy. Like so many families of the ruling class, Cicero's had been split down the middle by the civil war. And if that were not enough, rumor had it that Dolabella had been utterly faithless as a husband, carrying on a dalliance with Marc Antony's wife, Antonia.
'You haven't come to talk about this business with Milo and Caelius, I hope?' She referred to the insurrection rumored to be developing in the countryside south of Rome led by two of Cicero's old associates, Marcus Caelius and Titus Annius Milo.
'As a matter of fact, no.'
'Good! Because everyone thinks I should have an opinion about it, and I refuse to give one. Both of those fellows have brought my husband nothing but grief over the years, but at the same time, who can blame them for reaching the end of their patience? Of course they shall both get themselves killed, poor fools…' She shook her head. 'Then I suppose you've come about Cassandra,' she said, forestalling any apprehensions I might have had about coming directly to the point. Unlike her husband, who could speak for hours and say nothing, Terentia was not a woman to mince words.
When I nodded, she indicated with a gesture that we should follow. She took us to the same room to which Cicero had shown me on my last visit, a secluded little chamber off the central garden. But the room seemed different and strangely empty. What was it Cicero had told me? 'This was one of the first rooms Terentia decorated when we came back and rebuilt after Clodius and his gang burned down the house and sent me into exile…'
Cicero had been quite proud of this room and its exquisite furnishings, but where were those objects now? I vaguely recalled a sumptuous carpet with a geometrical Greek design; now there was only cold stone underfoot. There had been several fine chairs carved from terebinth with inlays of ivory; now there were only a couple of folding chairs of the simplest sort. There had been a finely wrought bronze brazier with griffin heads; that, too, was gone. The only decorations that remained were the ones that couldn't be removed, the pastoral landscapes painted on the walls that depicted herdsmen dozing amid sheep and satyrs peeking from behind little roadside shrines.
Terentia sighed. 'Ah, how Marcus loved this room! This was where he entertained his most important visitors-senators and magistrates and suitors for Tullia's hand. My husband brought you to this room the last time you called on him, did he not? His study was too crowded, as I recall-all those secretaries running about in a panic, packing up his confidential papers.' There was a note of disapproval in her voice that implied the room was really too good for the likes of me and, at the same time, a note of resignation. Now that the room had been stripped of its exquisite furnishings and reduced to a shadow of its former luxury, why not meet with me here?
The portable furnishings were gone, and Terentia wore no jewelry. Was she really in such dire straits that she was having to sell her personal possessions? I myself had fallen into debt thanks to the hardships of recent months, but it was a shock to think of a woman like Terentia facing the same hard choices.
'Was she a kinswoman?' she said.
'I beg your pardon?'
'The woman called Cassandra. Was she kin to you?'
'No.'
'Yet you conducted her funeral. There must have been some… relationship… between you.'
I made no reply. Terentia shrugged knowingly. The presumptuous gesture reminded me of her husband, and I felt a pang of resentment that she should assume she understood my connection to Cassandra, even if she was correct.
'You must have known her as well,' I said. 'Why else did you come to see her funeral pyre?'
'Yes, I did have a slight acquaintance with her. I asked about your connection to her only because I wanted to thank you for conducting her funeral. It's good that someone took the time and went to the expense of giving her a fitting ceremony. And you showed good taste. Not too many musicians and mourners. It's unseemly when they outnumber the real friends and family.'
'I could hardly afford the few I did hire.'
'Ah, money…' She nodded understandingly. 'And no longwinded speech before the funeral pyre. I always think that's rather pretentious when it's a woman, don't you? It's fitting to list the accomplishments of a man of the world, but if a woman's lived a proper life, what is there to say about her, really, at the end? And if she's led an improper life, the less said the better.'
I cleared my throat. 'If you came to her funeral, Cassandra must have been more than a passing acquaintance. How did you meet her?'
Terentia pulled back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She was not used to being questioned. In the courts her husband had become famous for his penetrating interrogation of witnesses; even the strongest men quailed before the fierce onslaught of Cicero's questioning. But in the daily course of married life, when Cicero had cause to question his wife and she had cause to remain silent-when the battering ram met the iron wall-which of them usually won that test of wills? Looking at that immovable jaw, I suspected it was Terentia.
Her demeanor gradually shifted. Her shoulders relaxed. She lowered her head. She had decided to answer me.
'If you know anything at all about Cassandra, you know that in the last few months she became something of a celebrity in society. I used the word 'society' loosely, since no such thing exists at the moment-we are all adrift, waiting for tomorrow. It was my sister Fabia who-for lack of a better word-'discovered' her. Cassandra appeared one day in front of the Temple of Vesta. Fabia was the senior Vestal on duty that day, tending to the divine flame. She heard a woman wailing outside. She went to see what was happening. These days, who knows? A woman might be raped or murdered in broad daylight on the temple steps. That was how Fabia came upon Cassandra, who was in the throes of one of her prophetic spells.'
'Yes, I know.'
Terentia gave me a curious look.
