myself.
'What are you saying to me, Daughter?'
'I'm saying that you must leave her behind. She's dead now. You must stop thinking about her. It's your family who need you now.' Her tone was not reproachful, merely matter-of-fact. How much, exactly, did she know about Cassandra and me? What did she know for a fact, and how much had she guessed, rightly or wrongly?
'Leave her behind, you say. Supposing that you're right, that I'm sitting here brooding about… that woman… how do you suggest I stop brooding, Daughter?'
'You know the answer to that, Papa! There's only one way. You must find out who killed her.'
I gazed long and hard at the sunflower. 'What good will that do?'
'Oh, Papa, you sound so hopeless. I hate to see you like this. It's bad enough that Mother's ill, but for you to be sick as well-sick at heart, I mean-and you've been this way ever since you came back from Massilia. We all know why. It's because of what happened between you and-'
I raised my hand to silence her. As a Roman paterfamilias, with the legal power of life and death over every member of my household, I was usually quite lax, allowing them all to speak their minds and do as they wished. But on this one subject, my break with Meto, I would allow no discourse.
'Very well, Papa, I won't speak of that. Still, I hate to see you this way. You're like a man who thinks the gods have turned against him.'
And haven't they? I wanted to say, but such an expression of self-pity would have contrasted too glaringly with my daughter's stoicism, and not to my credit. Besides, I had no reason to believe the gods had singled me out to vent their displeasure. It seemed to me lately that the gods had turned against all man kind. Or perhaps they had simply turned their backs on us, allowing the most ruthless among us, like Caesar and Pompey, to wreak unchecked havoc on the rest.
'Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of men-and women-will die before this war is over, Diana. Not one of those restless lemures of the dead is likely to find anything resembling justice in this world or the next. If Cassandra was murdered-'
'You know she was, Papa. She was poisoned. She told you so.'
'If she was murdered, what good will it do to find out who killed her? No Roman court-presuming the courts ever return to normal-would be interested in prosecuting such a crime, perpetrated on a woman nobody knew or cared about.'
'You cared enough to give her a decent funeral.'
'That's beside the point.'
'And some of the most powerful women in Rome cared enough to come to her funeral. You saw them, skulking on the periphery, staying well away from the pyre as if the flames might scorch them-or show the guilt on their faces. It was one of them who killed her, wasn't it?'
'It might have been.' Before her death, Cassandra had been courted by the highest circles of Roman society, summoned to the houses of the rich and powerful who had learned about her gift. Had she known the danger she might face by consorting with such women? What uncovered secrets from the past-or from the future-might have led one of those women to silence Cassandra forever?
'Shall I do it for you, Papa?'
'Do what?'
'Shall I do it in your stead-uncover the truth about her death?'
'What a ridiculous idea!'
'It's not so ridiculous. I know how you work. I've watched you since I was a child. I've listened to all your stories about snooping for Cicero, and uncovering chariot races that were fixed, and going off to Spain or Syracuse to look for a murderer at some rich man's behest. Do you think I'd be incapable of doing the same thing myself?'
'You make it sound like baking a batch of flat bread, Diana. Mix this list of ingredients, bake for a certain length of time-'
'Baking is harder than you make it sound, Papa. It takes skill and experience.'
'Exactly. And you have neither when it comes to-well, to the sort of work you're talking about.'
'It's because I'm a woman, isn't it? You don't think I could do it because I'm a woman. Do you really think I'm not as clever as a man?'
'Cleverness has nothing to do with it. There are places a woman can't go. There are questions a woman can't ask. And don't forget the danger, Diana.'
'But I'd have Davus for all that! He's big and strong. He can go anywhere. He could twist arms or break down doors-'
'Diana, don't be absurd!' I took off my hat and fanned myself with it, squinting at the bright sunlight. 'You've done some thinking about this, haven't you?'
'Perhaps.'
'Well, stop any such thoughts at once, and abandon any ambitions you may have in such a direction-'Diana the Finder,' indeed!'
'No-Diana and Davus the Finders, plural.'
'Double absurdity! I absolutely forbid it. You'll follow the example of your mother. She began with every disadvantage, yet look at her now-she's made herself into the very model of a Roman matron: modest, respectable, responsible, running a household, raising a family-'
'Is that how you'd describe those model Roman matrons who showed up at Cassandra's funeral?'
I thought of some of those women and the scandals that attended them, and I had to cede the point to Diana. In such times, did any real standard of Roman womanhood exist any longer? It was the same for men and women alike-virtues had turned to vices and vices to virtues.
I put on my hat and stood, listening to my knees crack as they straightened. 'If your intention was to incite me to action, Diana, then you've succeeded. Fetch Davus for me, would you? I shall take him along with me-in case I have to break down some doors or twist some arms. And you, meanwhile, will stay home and tend to your ailing mother. I expect to smell radish soup bubbling on the hearth when I come home!'
The easiest place to begin was also the closest-at the house of Cicero, just down the street from my own.
With the assistance of Mopsus and Androcles, Davus and I put on our best togas. The two of us left the house and walked along the rim road that skirted the crest of the Palatine Hill, with a view of the Forum below and the Capitoline Hill surmounted by the Temple of Jupiter in the distance. It was a beautiful summer day.
At Cicero's house, Davus knocked politely on the door with his foot. An eye peered at us through a peephole in the door. I stated my name and asked to see the mistress of the house. The peephole slid shut. A few moments later the door opened.
I had visited the house of Cicero many times over the years. At the zenith of his fortunes, in the year he served as consul and quashed the so-called conspiracy of Catilina, this house had arguably been the very center of the Roman world, the site of the most important political meetings as well as the most dazzling cultural gatherings. Men of letters and men of affairs had passed through its portals; they had sipped wine and listened to one another's poems and monographs in its gardens; they had shaped the future course of the Republic in Cicero's study.
At the nadir of Cicero's fortunes, the house had been burned to the ground by Clodius and his gang, and its master had been sent into exile. But Cicero had eventually returned to Rome, regained his rights of citizenship and his place in the Senate, and rebuilt his house on the Palatine.
Now the master of this house was again in a kind of exile, far away in Greece with Pompey. For months after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Cicero had procrastinated and vacillated, agonizing over his choices. Both sides had wooed him, not for his military skills, but for the political weight he carried; Cicero's endorsement of either side would do much to sway the sentiments of those who considered themselves steadfast upholders of the Republic. On principle, Cicero sided with Pompey from the start, seeing him as the only possible protector of the status quo; but for as long as he could, Cicero hedged his bets, sending letters back and forth to both Pompey and Caesar, desperately trying to hew a middle course. But there was no middle course, and finally, when exaggerated news of a temporary setback to Caesar's fortunes in Spain reached Rome in the month of Junius of the previous year, Cicero took the great leap and with his son Marcus, who was barely old enough to wear a manly toga, left Italy to join
