'Run afoul of some ruffians in the Forum, Husband?' she asked.
'No, Wife.'
'A brawl in some shady tavern, then?'
'Of course not.'
She raised an eyebrow. 'Perhaps a beautiful woman gave you a slap for getting fresh with her?'
My face grew hot. 'Something like that.'
Bethesda smiled and told Mopsus to bring her more stewed leeks, the latest cure in which she had vested her hopes. She seemed satisfied to allow the cause of my swollen lip to remain a mystery, but I noticed that Diana, reclining on one elbow beside Davus on their dining couch, had fixed me with a darkly questioning gaze.
Among those meetings with Cassandra that blur together in my memory, another incident stands out, not least because it occurred on the last day we met in her room in the Subura. It was the last day we would be alone together; the last time we would make love.
I had no way of knowing that at the time. Had I known, would I have held her more tightly, made love to her more passionately? That hardly seems possible. I fear I might have done the opposite, become remote and drawn away from her-doing as many men do when they realize they must lose the thing they love, looking for a shortcut around their suffering. They push away the thing they love before it can be snatched from them.
I never had to confront that dilemma; I never saw what was coming.
It was a warm early afternoon, the day before the Nones of Sextilis. Not a breeze stirred in all of Rome. A stifling haze had settled over the city. Cassandra's room in the Subura was like a heated cubicle at the baths. Warmth radiated from the walls. A shaft of sunlight entered through the high window and struck the opposite wall, so thick with motes of dust that it seemed a solid thing, a strangely glowing beam lodged above our heads.
I had thought the heat would stifle our lovemaking, but it had the opposite effect, acting on us like a drug. The normal limitations on my body melted away. I transcended myself. I entered a state of rapture so complete I no longer knew where or who I was. Afterward, I felt as light and insubstantial as one of those motes of dust riding the sunbeam above our heads.
A delicious lethargy overcame me. I felt heavy, solid, inert. My limbs turned to lead. Even a finger was too heavy to lift. I seemed to dream, yet the images conjured by Somnus slipped away before I could apprehend them, like shadows glimpsed from the corner of one's eye. I neither slept nor woke.
Slowly, gradually, I heard voices.
They seemed to come from somewhere above me, muffled by distance. Two men were speaking. Their words were indistinct, but I could tell that their discussion was heated. 'Keep your voice down!' one of them said, loud enough for me to hear.
I knew that voice.
I stirred. I seemed to be waking from a dream. For a long moment, I thought the voices had been part of that dream. Then I heard them again. They came from the room above. Partly I heard them through the floor, but mostly from the high window, which must have been directly below a window of the room above.
I sensed that Cassandra was gone even before I reached for her and found the place beside me empty. The spot was still warm from her body.
The speakers in the room above lowered their voices. I heard them now only as a murmur. Surely I had only imagined that I recognized one of those voices…
I got out of bed, reached for my loincloth and stepped into it, then put on my tunic. I stepped past the curtain that covered Cassandra's doorway, into the hallway beyond. Around a bend, past other curtained doorways, I came to a flight of wooden steps. I took them slowly, trying to make no noise. Even so, the very last step before I arrived at the next floor made a loud creak. The murmur of voices that came from the room at the end of the hall abruptly ceased.
I took another step. The floorboard creaked. From the room at the end of the hall there came only silence. I stood motionless for a long time. Then I heard a voice, the one I had recognized before, say quite distinctly, 'Do you think that's him?'
'It must be,' said the other man. With a start, I recognized his voice as well.
I had to be mistaken. My imagination was running away with me. To prove it I walked steadily down the hallway, heedless of creaking floorboards. I confronted a curtain much like the curtain that covered Cassandra's doorway.
I stared at the curtain. From beyond came only silence-or rather, not quite silence, but the sound of men breathing. Did I only imagine that, or could they hear me breathing as well?
I raised my hand to grip the curtain's edge and imagined someone on the other side doing the same. Would he be holding a dagger in his other hand?
I yanked the curtain aside, hardening my nerves to confront a face staring back at me, nose-to-nose. But I was alone at the threshold. The occupants-just the two of them, without a bodyguard in sight-were seated in the middle of the small room. At the sight of me they rose from their chairs. After the dim hallway, the light from the window dazzled me for a moment. I saw them only as two very different silhouettes, one broad and stocky, the other tall and elegantly slender. Gradually their faces came into focus.
'You see,' said Marcus Caelius to his companion, 'it's Gordianus, just as I said.'
'So it is,' said Milo, crossing his brawny arms. 'Well, don't just stand there, Finder. Drop the curtain and come inside. And keep your voice down!'
XIV
My interview with Fausta left me in a foul mood. I almost decided to leave off for the day and return home. But what would I do there except brood? There was plenty to brood about-Cassandra dead and my investigations leading me no nearer to the reason; Bethesda ill and growing weaker, with no cure in sight; Rome tottering on a narrow precipice with a chasm on either side, one called Pompey and the other Caesar, and two mastiffs called Milo and Caelius biting at her heels…
The day was in direct counterpoint to my mood. The sun shone bright and warm, its intensity relieved by a succession of magnificent clouds that advanced slowly across the azure sky, spaced apart as evenly as if some parade master had arrayed them like elephants in an imperator's triumphal procession.
'That one looks like a tragedy mask. You can even see the holes for the eyes and mouth,' said Davus.
'What?'
'That cloud up there. Isn't that what you're staring at?'
We sat on a stone bench in a little square not far from Fausta's house. I had told Davus that I needed to rest for a moment. In fact, it was my mind that was weary and needed to come to a complete stop. I had been staring at the parade of clouds and emptying my head of every thought.
'Yes, Davus, a tragedy mask.'
'Only now it's changing. See how the mouth is bending. You might almost say it was a comedy mask.'
'I see what you mean. But the whole shape is changing, isn't it? It's not really like a mask anymore. More like-nothing, really. Just a cloud…' Rather like my pursuit of the truth about Cassandra, I thought. My interviews had yielded a continual series of impressions that flowed one into another, all slightly different, all somehow askew, none of them quite recognizable as the Cassandra I had known. The truth about her was as elusive as a cloud, holding its shape only until the next interview changed it into something else.
'Only two more to go,' I said.
'Clouds?' said Davus.
'No! Only two more women to talk to, of those who came to watch Cassandra's funeral pyre: Calpurnia and Clodia.'
'Shall we go see one of them now, Father-in-Law?'
'Why not? On such a beautiful day, I think I know where Clodia will be.'
We crossed the bridge to the far side of the Tiber and turned to the right, keeping as close to the river as we
