He's a veritable stallion! Are you sure he's not too much for little Diana to handle?'
I cleared my throat. 'Perhaps we could speak of something else.'
'Must we? On such a day, how pleasant it would be to speak only of youth and beauty and love. But knowing you, Gordianus, I suppose you've come to talk about misery and murder and death.'
'One death, in particular.'
'The seeress?'
'She was called Cassandra.'
'Yes, I know.'
'You were there to see her burn.'
Clodia was silent for a moment, watching Davus splash in the water. 'I thought perhaps you had come to bring me… other news.'
'About what?'
'That monster Milo… and Marcus Caelius. This silly, doomed revolt of theirs.'
'What do you care about that?'
'They shall both get themselves killed.'
'Probably.'
'Caelius…' She stared at the water, lost in thought. 'Long ago when we were lovers, Caelius used to swim out there while I watched. Just the two of us, alone on this stretch of the riverbank; we needed no one else. I remember him standing just where your son-in-law is standing now, naked, with his back to me-Caelius had a delicious back side-then slowly turning around to show me his grin… and the fact that he was rampant and ready for love.'
'You must have seen many men since then, bathing naked out there.'
'None like Caelius.'
'Yet you came to hate him.'
'He deserted me.'
'You tried to destroy him.'
'But I didn't succeed, did I? I only did harm to myself. And now, without any assistance from me, Caelius seems determined to destroy himself.' She closed her eyes. 'Gone,' she whispered, 'all gone: my dear, sweet brother; Fulvia's beloved Curio; so many of the beautiful young men who used to come here, cavorting in the water without a care. Even that pest Catullus with his wretched poems. Whom shall the Fates take next? Marcus Caelius, I suppose. After so many years of laughing in their faces, the Fates shall snatch him up and send him straight to Hades.'
'You'll be revenged on him at last.'
She nodded. 'That's one way of looking at it.'
'I came to talk about Cassandra, not Caelius.'
'Ah, yes. The seeress.'
'You say that with irony in your voice. Did she prophesy for you?'
'Why do you ask, Gordianus?'
'She was murdered. I want to find out why she died, and who killed her.'
'Why? It won't bring her back.' She tilted her head and looked at me keenly, then made a face. 'Oh, dear. Is that it? Now I see. Well, well. Cassandra succeeded where Clodia failed.'
'If you mean-'
'You were in love with her, weren't you?'
I had never said that word aloud, not even to Cassandra herself. 'Perhaps.'
'At any rate, you made love to her.'
'Yes.'
She released a sigh of mingled exasperation and amusement. 'Fortune's wheel spins round and round! Now Clodia finds herself celibate-and the ever-faithful Gordianus is an adulterer! Who would ever have thought it? The gods must be laughing at us.'
'So I have long suspected.'
She stared abstractedly at the glinting sunlight on the water and bit her thumbnail. 'That was rude of me, to speak so glibly. You must be quite devastated.'
'Cassandra's death was a blow to me, yes, among many other blows of late.'
'Gordianus the stoic! You should learn to vent your emotions. Drink yourself into a stupor. Destroy some irreplaceable object in a rage. Spend an hour or two torturing one of your slaves. You'll feel better.'
'I'd rather find out who killed Cassandra, and why.'
'And then what? I saw the other women who came to watch Cassandra's funeral pyre. If it was one of them, what action could you possibly take? The courts are a shambles. No magistrate will show any interest in the murder of a nobody like Cassandra. And every one of those women is too powerful for you to take on by yourself. You'll never find justice.'
'Then I'll settle for finding the truth.'
'How strange you are, Gordianus! They say each mortal has a guiding passion. Seeking pleasure seems endlessly more sensible to me, but if finding truth is yours, so be it.' Clodia shrugged. Even though the gesture was almost swallowed by her voluminous stola, even though age and suffering had changed her outwardly, in that eloquent rise and fall of her shoulders I caught a glimpse of the essential Clodia. That shrug summed up everything about her in an instant. She had lived a life larger than most men dreamed of, had devoured every sensation flesh could offer, had followed every emotion to its utmost extremity-and in the end, Clodia shrugged.
I knew in that moment why I had succumbed to my desire for Cassandra, yet had never quite succumbed to Clodia. It was impossible to imagine Cassandra shrugging like that. The intensity with which she lived in the moment made such a gesture unthinkable. Once Clodia had seemed to me the most vital woman alive, but only because I mistook a raging appetite for a love of life, and I had no one to show me the difference until I met Cassandra.
'You can't tell me anything that might be of use to me?' I said.
'About Cassandra? Tell me what you know about her already.'
It seemed to me that Clodia was intentionally avoiding my question. 'I know that she was invited into the houses of some of the most powerful women in Rome,' I said. 'Some of those women think she was a genuine seeress. Others think she was a fraud. I know she came from Alexandria, where she acted in the mimes. But her seizures-at least some of them-were entirely real.'
'What else do you know?'
I took a breath. 'I think she may have been involved in some way-how, I'm not sure-in this business with Milo and Caelius.'
Clodia raised an eyebrow. 'I see. And why is that?'
'I have my reasons.'
Clodia turned her gaze to Davus, who had swum a considerable distance up the river and was now swimming back. 'What a pair of shoulders,' she murmured. 'I hope your daughter appreciates them.'
'I think she does.'
'He's going to be hungry when he climbs out. A good thing my pantry slave always packs more food into that box than I could possibly eat by myself. What else do you know about Cassandra? I think, Gordianus, that you're leaving something out.'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Don't you? The most important thing of all. You were in love with her. Hopelessly in love, from the look on your face. But did she love you? Ah! Really, you should go take a look at yourself in the water, Gordianus. You'd see the face of a man who's just been poked where he can least stand to be touched. That's what this is really about. Not, 'Who killed Cassandra?' but, 'Who was Cassandra?' What was she really up to? And most important of all, what did she really want-not just from those lofty Roman matrons, but from a humble fellow called the Finder. But if you don't already know the answer to that question, you'll never find it now.'
Davus emerged from the water, glistening wet and shaking the water from his hair. 'Magnificent arms,' whispered Clodia, growling like a tigress. 'The war has turned Rome into a city of old men and boys. I thought Pompey and Caesar had snatched up all the worthy specimens to feed to Mars, but they somehow overlooked this
