The slave smiled. 'We'll be there very shortly.'
I felt the motion of the litter each time we took a sharp turn, but we never seemed to go downhill. That meant we were still somewhere on the Palatine Hill when the litter came to a stop. I heard the sound of a heavy bar being lifted on a hinge and gates swinging open. We moved forward into a graveled courtyard; I could hear the stones crunching under the bearers' feet. The litter stopped. The gates swung shut, and the bar dropped back into place. The slave parted the drapes with his forefinger and peered out, awaiting a signal. At last he pushed back the drape and gestured for me to exit the litter.
As soon as my feet touched the gravel, I was flanked by two bodyguards who escorted me across the narrow courtyard, up a short flight of steps, and into a small but elegantly appointed foyer. The white walls were trimmed with blue and gold. A small bronze statue of Venus occupied a scalloped niche. The floor was decorated with a mosaic of Venus emerging naked from the sea. I was reminded that Caesar claimed Venus as his ancestress. It was Venus his soldiers called upon for victory.
The guards escorted me through an atrium where goldfish darted across the sunken pool. Ahead I caught a glimpse of sunlit greenery, a garden surrounded by a portico, but the guards led me to one side, down a short hallway, and into a small library. The far wall was lined with a tall book case, its pigeonholes filled with scrolls. Paintings depicting a battle covered the walls on either side. Arrayed across the wall to the right was the army of the ancient Greeks led by Alexander the Great, instantly recognizable by his chiseled features and his golden mane of hair. On the opposite wall was the army of the Persian king Darius, whom Alexander had defeated to become master of the world.
Seated before the book case, dominating the room despite the massive, dramatic pictures, was Calpurnia. She was handsome enough, though not a great beauty. She seemed oblivious of the latest fashions, with their Eastern and Egyptian influences; from her clothing, jewelry, and hairstyle, she might have been an austere Roman matron of a century ago. Her countenance was as severe as her costume; she looked like a mistress about to rebuke a wayward slave, and I reflexively braced myself. But before she spoke, she smiled, just enough to put me at ease-or to put me off my guard? — and I saw that she possessed a certain charm not unlike her husband's. Had she possessed it before Caesar met her, or had she learned it from him?
'Sit,' she said. I turned my head to see that a chair had been placed behind me. The guards had discreetly withdrawn to a post just outside the door.
She waited until I was seated, then paused for several heartbeats before she spoke again. That, too, was a technique of Caesar's, never to seem rushed. 'We've never met, Gordianus, but I know of your reputation and of my husband's high regard for you. You've had a long and interesting career in this city. I had thought that you were retired, but I understand that for the last few days you've been rather busy, crisscrossing Rome with that burly son-in-law of yours.'
'You've had someone following us?'
The brusqueness of the question left her unfazed. 'Let us say that you have been observed. One by one, you've been visiting each of the women who came to Cassandra's funeral. I was there, too. You must have seen my litter. Yet you haven't yet called on me.'
'I intended to do so.'
'Why didn't you come to me first?'
I cleared my throat. 'Out of deference, I suppose. Great Caesar's wife must be a very busy woman, with little time to answer the queries of a humble citizen like myself. Or so I thought. May I ask where we are?'
'In a house tucked away on a little cul-de-sac on the Palatine Hill. You needn't know the exact location. My husband has owned this place for years, but only a very select few have ever stepped inside it. Even some of his closest advisors are unaware of its existence. It seemed an appropriate place for you and I to meet, since this was where Cassandra resided.'
I frowned. 'Here? But I thought-'
'That shabby room in the Subura? Her residence there was a pretense, part of the role she played. This was the house where she kept her possessions. It was to this house that she retreated whenever she felt she might be in danger, or whenever she grew too sick of her role as a pauper and needed a taste of luxury. I imagine she would have liked to bring you to this house, Gordianus, but that wasn't possible. Her room was just across the garden. It was in this room that I came to meet with her. I would sit here, and she would sit where you're sitting, in that very chair.'
'You met with Cassandra?'
'On a regular basis, so that I could give her instructions, and so that she could deliver any valuable information she had uncovered since our last meeting.'
I took this in. 'Cassandra was your spy?'
'My husband's spy, to be more precise. It was Caesar who recruited her, Caesar who briefed her on what he expected from her, and Caesar who trained her-as a spy, I mean. Cassandra was already an accomplished actress, of course, but the arts of the spy are somewhat more specialized.' She peered at me intently. 'Are you grinding your teeth, Finder?'
'Always Caesar!' I said, staring up at the image of Alexander, then across to the image of Darius. Which would Caesar resemble more when the story of his life came to an end? The conqueror beloved by gods and storytellers, or the arrogant emperor who owned the world but lost it? On his journey to his destiny, Caesar had swept the whole world along in his wake. He loomed over everything, casting his shadow not just over armies and kings but over every thing and every person I loved. Now I found his shadow had covered Cassandra as well.
Calpurnia looked at me coolly. 'I understand that you harbor some sort of grudge against my husband for having claimed the loyalty and affection of your son-'
'Meto is no longer my son!'
She nodded. 'Even so, Caesar harbors no resentment against you, Gordianus. In time, he hopes that he may once again be able to count you among his friends.' That was always Caesar's way, to mend breaches, to convert enemies, to draw everyone into his circle, even if later the need arose to destroy them.
'But we were talking of Cassandra,' she said. 'I know that her death has caused you great distress. I think Caesar would want me to reveal to you who Cassandra was, and how and why she came to Rome. What do you already know about her?'
That she was beautiful and tragic and doomed, I thought. That I fell in love with her, or thought I did, knowing nothing about her.
'That she came from Alexandria,' I said. 'That she performed in the mime shows there and knew Cytheris. That she suffered from seizures and falling sickness-unless that was a pretense. That she may or may not have possessed the gift of prophecy. That she used her reputation as a seeress to play a cruel joke on Antonia, at Cytheris's behest. That she may have done the same thing to a number of other powerful women in Rome who sought her out-unless she was black mailing them. Or spying on them.'
Calpurnia nodded. 'If I tell you that my husband has a number of agents who gather intelligence for him, I presume that will come as no surprise to you. Agents of all sorts, high and low-from street urchins and tavern keepers to centurions and senators. You never know who might overhear something of importance. It takes skill, patience, and experience to make sense of all the information that comes in, to scrutinize the sources, to disregard lies planted by the enemy, to decide between conflicting accounts. All those bits of information are like tiles in a mosaic; separately they signify nothing, but together, from the right perspective, they form a sort of picture.
'It's an intricate business, all the more complicated because it takes place in the shadows. That's what my husband calls it-the shadow war between himself and his enemies. The battles that everyone knows about take place in broad daylight between soldiers who fight with swords and spears. There are other battles that take place in the shadows, which no one sees or even knows about-but people die in those battles, nonetheless. I suppose one could think of Cassandra as a kind of Amazon, a woman warrior. It's the only way a woman can be a warrior, I suppose, fighting in the shadow war.'
'Why did she fight for Caesar?'
'Why does any soldier fight for him? Because he paid her, of course. As part of the arrangement, she became a free woman, and she was very handsomely paid in regular installments that I held in trust for her. The work Cassandra did was dangerous, but she was well rewarded. She would have returned to Alexandria a wealthy woman… had she survived.'
'How did Caesar recruit her?'
