a wall. On the ground beneath one of the lurking satyrs, half-hidden amid the shrubbery, lay a handsome young slave, snoring softly.
'It's this one's job to answer the door,' said Cytheris, walking up to him. I thought she was going to give him a kick, but instead she looked down at him with a doting smile. 'Such a sweet little faun. Even his snore is sweet, don't you think?' Then she did give him a kick, but gently, prodding him with her foot until he finally stirred and rose groggily to his feet, brushing leaves from his curly black hair. He saw that his mistress had company and without being told gathered three chairs and set them in the shade, then disappeared into the house, blinking and rubbing his eyes.
'Bring the best Falernian, Chrysippus!' Cytheris called after him. 'Not the cheap swill I served to that rowdy gang of actors and mimes who were here last night.'
She smiled and indicated that we should sit, then finally took a good look at me. I felt a bit uncomfortable under her scrutiny. 'Yes,' she said, 'now I see what it was that Cassandra saw in you. 'It's his eyes, Cytheris,' she said to me once. 'He has the most extraordinary eyes-like a wise old king in a legend.' '
Did I stiffen? Did my face turn red? Cytheris looked from me to Davus and back and pursed her lips. 'Oh, dear, was that indiscreet of me?' she said. 'You must tell me right away whether I can speak to you candidly or not. I'm not the sort to hold my tongue unless I'm asked to. Perhaps you should send your frowning son-in-law out of earshot for a while-though that would be a pity.'
'No, Davus can stay. There's no point in concealing anything about Cassandra… now that she's dead. That's why I've come to you. You must have known her quite well if she told you about herself… and me.'
She looked at me sidelong. 'As you say, now that she's dead, there's no point in hiding anything, is there? To whom else have you spoken about her?'
'I've been calling on the women who came to her funeral: Terentia, Fulvia, Antonia…'
'Ha! You're not likely to discover anything important about Cassandra from any of those hens, unless it was one of them who murdered her.' A frown pulled at her lips, but she brightened when Chrysippus reappeared bearing a pitcher and three cups. I had no craving for wine, but only a fool would pass up an offer of good Falernian, especially in such hard times. The dark flavor played upon my tongue and filled my head like a warm, comforting mist.
'Terentia and Fulvia think Cassandra was a true seeress. They were both quite in awe of her,' I said.
'But not Antonia?'
'Antonia has a very different opinion. She thinks Cassandra was an impostor.'
'And Cassandra's spells of prophecy?'
'Merely part of an act.'
Cytheris smiled. 'Antonia is no fool, no matter what her dear husband says.'
'Antonia was right about Cassandra?'
Cytheris considered her answer before she spoke. 'Up to a point.'
I frowned. Cytheris smiled. She seemed to enjoy my puzzlement. Her smile widened into a yawn, and she stretched her arms above her head. The movement caused her torso to shift in a most intriguing way beneath the loose tunica. Even her most casual movements were marked by a dancer's gracefulness. I would have cursed her condescending smile except that it made her even more remarkably beautiful. I looked at the stone satyrs lurking in the corners, gazing with lust upon the goddess they would never touch, and felt a stab of sympathy for them.
'Shall I explain?' she said.
'I'd be grateful if you would.'
'Where to begin? Back in Alexandria, I suppose. That's where I met her, when we were both hardly more than children. I was born to a slave mother; but early on someone saw in me a talent for dancing, and I was sold to the master of a mime troupe-not just any troupe, but the oldest and most famous in Alexandria. The master liked to say that his ancestors had entertained Alexander the Great. People in Alexandria are always making claims like that. Still, the troupe could trace its history back for generations. I was taught to dance and mime and recite by some of the finest performers in Alexandria, and that means the finest in the world.'
'And Cassandra?'
'The master acquired her and brought her into the troupe shortly after me. I was terribly jealous of her. Do you know, I think this is the first time I've ever admitted that to anyone.'
'Jealous? Why?'
'Because she was so much more talented that I was-at everything! Her gifts were extraordinary. She could recite Homer and make men weep, or make them weep with laughter by enacting a fable by Aesop. She could dance like a veil floating on the breeze. She could sing like a bird, and do so in whatever language you pleased- because she picked up languages the way the rest of us picked up bits of jewelry from admirers in the audience. And she did all this without apparent effort. Beside her, I felt like a clumsy, sweating, squawking fool.'
'I find that hard to believe, Cytheris.'
'Only because you never saw the two of us perform side by side.'
'You must have hated her.'
'Hated her?' Cytheris sighed. 'Quite the opposite. We were very, very close back in those days, Cassandra and I. Those lovely days in Alexandria…'
'You call her Cassandra, yet that can't have been her real name.'
She smiled. 'The curious thing is, that was what we called her, even then. But you're right. When she first arrived, she had another name. But do you know, I've completely forgotten it. Some totally unpronounceable Sarmatian name; she'd come from somewhere on the far side of the Euxine Sea. But very early on she played Cassandra in a new mime show the master had written. Just a vulgar little skit, really; can you imagine, a comic Cassandra? But she was hilarious, staggering around, harassing the other characters, making rude prophecies and double entendres about the city officials and King Ptolemy. People loved it so much they demanded that mime every time we performed. She made such an impression with the role that the name stuck, and Cassandra was what we called her from then on.'
Cytheris gazed thoughtfully into her cup, swirling the Falernian into a vortex. 'We begin as we continue in this life. That's especially true of us performers. If we're lucky, we find a role that fits, and we play it to the hilt. I always specialized in playing the wanton woman, the seductress. Look where that role's taken me! Cassandra played… Cassandra. I imagine it must be the same for you, Gordianus. To some extent isn't the Finder a role you fell into early on, that you gradually perfected, that you'll keep playing until the end?'
'Perhaps. But if I'm playing a role, where's the playwright? And if there is a playwright, I'd like to complain to him about the nasty surprises he keeps throwing at me.'
'Complain? You should be thankful for a life that keeps giving you surprises! Surprises keep you on your toes. You wouldn't want to grow stale in your part, would you?' She laughed, then sighed. 'But we were talking about Cassandra. It's such a pity that women aren't allowed to be real actors, performing in the Greek tragedies or even in silly Roman comedies. Instead, only men can go on the legitimate stage. It doesn't matter if the role is a swaggering general or a virgin goddess, it's a man who performs it behind a mask. Women are allowed only to be dancers or to perform mime comedies in the street. It's criminal, really. When I think of what our Cassandra could have achieved performing the great female parts-the Antigone of Sophocles or Euripides' Medea. Or the Clytaemnestra of Aeschylus-imagine that! She'd have made your blood run cold. She'd have made strong men run whimpering from the theater! Perhaps that's why women aren't allowed to play women on the stage-the result might be too disturbing for you men in the audience, and too inspiring for the women.
'Even so, we actresses sometimes manage to find the role that takes us where we want to go. We simply have to create it ourselves and live it day by day, instead of performing it on a stage. That's what I did. And that's what our Cassandra did.'
'Until the role killed her,' I said. 'You say you met her in Alexandria. What then?'
'Dear old Volumnius came along. Fat, sweet, incredibly rich Volumnius. This was five years ago-yes, almost exactly five years to the day. Volumnius was in Alexandria on some sort of business trip. He just happened to be passing through the Rhakotis district with his entourage one day when we were performing near the Temple of Serapis. I spotted him in the audience right away, fiddling with his gold rings and his gold necklaces and biting his lips and watching me dance the way a cat watches a sparrow flit through the trees. I put on the performance of my life that day. I was doing the dance of seven veils, taking them off one by one-a bit of naughtiness to spice up the show in between all the clowning. You're supposed to take off only six veils, of course; that's the point, to tease the
