angry and cheated at the prospect of either of those leaders winning. Why not turn away from Caesar and Pompey both, and find a third way to the future? It makes perfect sense-if they can pull it off.'
'Can they?'
'How should I know. Do I look like Cassandra?'
I drew a breath. 'How well did you know her?'
'Did anyone really know Cassandra? That's why you've come, of course. Not to ask after Milo, or me, but because I came to Cassandra's funeral, and you want to talk about her. Am I right?'
'Yes.'
She nodded. 'I sought her out one day in the market. I invited her here. She stared at a flame and had a fit. I listened to what she had to say, gave her a few coins, and sent her on her way. Why not? Every woman in Rome was desperate to hear what Cassandra had to tell them.'
'And what did she tell you?'
Fausta laughed. 'A bunch of garbled nonsense. Truthfully, I couldn't make sense of it. I suppose I'm too literal minded for that sort of thing. Why do oracles and portents always have to be so obscure? Call a truffle a truffle, that's what I say! I never much liked plays or poetry for the same reason. I've no patience for metaphors and similes.'
'Cassandra didn't foretell Milo's return and his alliance with Caelius?'
Fausta shrugged and winced a bit-I heard her hiss-as she rearranged her arm in the sling. 'Oh, there was something about a bear and a snake, I think. And two eagles. Was the bear Milo? Was the snake Caelius? Were the eagles Pompey and Caesar? Or was it all the other way around? Your guess is as good as mine.' She sighed. 'Milo was always so much more interested in that sort of thing than I was.'
'Really?'
'Oh, yes. He always took omens very seriously. More now than ever, I should think.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Because'-she sighed heavily-'on that fateful day when Clodius died, Milo saw all sorts of bad omens before we ever set out on the Appian Way. He saw a vulture flying upside down, and then a duck with three feet crossed our path, or so he claimed. Later, when everything started going wrong that day, Milo kept muttering, 'I should have paid attention to the signs; I should have known there would be trouble; we should never have set out; we should have stayed home.' You probably never saw that side of him. He didn't talk much about premonitions and such, except to me, because Cicero would make such fun of him for being so superstitious. But Milo was always on the look out for portents. A lot of good it ever did him! What's the use of seeing a falling star if it's careening straight toward you?'
I nodded. 'You say that I came only to ask after Cassandra, not you and Milo, but that's not entirely true. Would you take it amiss if I asked you a personal question?'
'Ask and find out.'
'Why are you still married to Milo? You didn't go with him to Massilia; you stayed here, with no prospect of his ever returning to you. Why not divorce him so that you might remarry?'
She snorted, and for a moment I thought I had offended her. But her exasperation was with her fate, not with me. Like many people burdened with regrets, she was not averse to voicing her bitterness to a relative stranger. 'One divorce has pretty much become the standard these days, hasn't it? Among the fashionable set, I mean. But two divorces-well, that begins to look a bit careless, don't you think? My first husband divorced me as a sort of punishment for cuckolding him. That wasn't a problem with Milo. Milo rather liked being cuckolded, I think. It gave him an excuse to vent his rage. It… stimulated him. He was never such a tiger in bed as he was right after catching me with another man. So strong. So… violent. I'm afraid I rather developed a taste for that sort of thing.'
She readjusted her sling, and hissed. 'But I digress. I stayed married to Milo because it was the respectable thing to do. Believe it or not, that still matters to me. I am Sulla's daughter. I won't have people saying I abandoned my husband simply because he ran into a bit of trouble.'
A murder conviction and lifelong exile hardly seemed to me to be a 'bit of trouble,' but my standards differed from those of Fausta in many matters. 'Or could it be,' I said, 'that in the long run you had faith in Milo? That you could foresee a time when he might return to Rome in triumph, beheading his enemies as your father beheaded his, making himself the first man in Rome and yourself the first among women?' Such a thing might actually come to pass, I realized with a chill. Whether Caesar or Pompey eventually returned, in the meantime Milo and Caelius might pull off their mad scheme and make themselves masters of Rome. Such a thing would never happen without the spilling of much blood.
She made a derisive sound deep in her throat. 'Don't compare Milo to my father! He knew how to make this town come to heel, instead of letting the she-wolf bite him in the ass. We shall never see his like again-not in Caesar, not in Pompey, certainly not in Milo. The best I can hope for'-she hesitated, but a sudden burst of emotion was too much for her to contain-'the best I can hope for is to become Milo's widow. People shall pity me then. And respect me! They shall say, 'Poor Fausta! She suffered greatly from her second marriage. But she stood by that fool to the very end, didn't she? She proved her mettle. She was truly Sulla's daughter!' '
I considered this for a long moment, wishing I could see her face more clearly. But the light from outside was growing stronger as the morning drew on, casting her features even deeper into shadow. 'I don't quite understand,' I confessed.
'I wouldn't expect you to. You're not one of those who count-not one of us.'
'Not a noble, you mean?'
She shook her head. 'Not a woman!' She stood, indicating that the interview was at an end.
In the hallway, she drew back into a shadowy corner. Again I noticed her slight limp. Birria appeared, to show us out. He curled his lip and from under his bristling brow gave her a look that seemed to border on madness, until I realized it was lasciviousness I saw in his eyes. I looked at Fausta. Despite the shadows, I saw what she had been deliberately concealing by sitting against the light-a bruised, black crescent beneath one of her eyes.
I looked back at Birria and matched his glare with my own. 'Fausta,' I said, 'do you need our help?'
'What do you mean?'
'You limp. Your arm is in a sling.'
She shrugged. 'It's nothing, really. Certainly nothing to concern you. A small accident. I'm a bit clumsy sometimes.'
'I find that hard to believe of Sulla's daughter.'
'What you believe is of no consequence, Finder. Go now. And, Birria, after you've shown these two out… come straight back to me.'
He gave her a snarling grin, but it was the crooked smile she flashed back at him that made my blood run cold. I turned and walked quickly to the front door, not waiting for Birria to lead the way. In the foyer I paused for a moment to gaze at the marble bust of Sulla and to wonder at the curious events it must have witnessed in that house.
XIII
The sixth time I saw Cassandra-and the seventh and eighth and ninth and all the other times before her death-are jumbled in my mind. Even the exact number of times eludes me. My memories of those meetings blur together, as the heated flesh of two lovers becomes blurred in the act of love, so that the lover cannot tell where his own body ends and that of the beloved begins.
After the first time we made love, we arranged to meet again in her room in the Subura, at a specific time, on a specific day. Thus our pattern was set. These arrangements were determined by Cassandra, partly, I think, to coincide with her mornings at the public baths, for I always found her fresh and clean, but also, I assumed, to make sure that Rupa would not be there when I came. Was he her lover? Her slave? A relative? I didn't know. She never told me. I never asked.
What did we talk about in the spells between lovemaking? Nothing remotely to do with our complicated circumstances; nothing that might impinge upon the special world the two of us created in that room. I think I did speak sometimes of Diana and Davus, and Hieronymus, and Androcles and Mopsus, especially if one of them had
