"Fulvia, no!" Her mother gripped her arm with white knuckles, but Fulvia pressed on.

"And then… she saw Gaius's face rise up again, as if by some miracle he had gotten to his feet, even amid all that murderous swarm. Not only that, but he was… smiling. Grinning like a boy, she said. But then… then she saw the vision more clearly and realized… there was no body below his neck, which was severed and dripping with blood. His head was being held aloft by the Numidian who had beheaded him. He only seemed to smile because… because the fist clenching his black curls pulled taut the muscles of his face, opening his mouth, baring his teeth…"

Throughout this long recitation, Fulvia kept her eyes on mine as if daring me to look away. At last I did, unable to bear the pain I saw there. It was not the glimmer of eyes brimming with hot tears, but a hard, dry grief, tearless and cold.

Fulvia drew a deep breath. "As abruptly as it began, the spell ended. She was simply a meek beggar again, dazed, hungry, with no recollection of what she had just said. I was stunned, shocked, speechless. Food was brought. I watched her eat. She was like a beast, with no manners at all. Her odor offended me, so I sent her to be bathed. I ordered that her old rags should be burned and told one of my slaves to find a proper tunica for her. The slave found an old blue one that suited her. When I saw her cleaned and properly dressed, I realized how beautiful she was. I told Thraso that she should be given a place to sleep, and that he should keep watch on her.

"At dawn Thraso came to me and told me that the woman had slept the night through, quite soundly. I myself had slept not at all. I told Thraso to keep the woman in the house, to offer her whatever food and drink she wanted, to lock her in her room if he had to. But I was the one who behaved like a prisoner. I shut myself in this room. I saw no one, spoke to no one, not even my mother. I simply waited, sick with dread. From these windows I watched the sun rise and fall over the city. I passed another night without sleep.

"It was on the next day-two days after the woman related her vision to me-that Caesar summoned his inner circle and told them that he had just received word from Africa. Marc Antony came at once to give me the bad news. I received him in this room, my heart beating so hard that I could barely hear him. He knew I would demand to know every detail. He carefully recited everything the messenger had told Caesar. The battle in the desert, the stifling heat, Gaius's last stand, even the fact that he had lost his helmet before the enemy swarmed over him-every detail matched what the woman had told me. Strangest of all, the messenger reported a rumor that King Juba had laughed when he received Gaius's head, not out of spite, but because Gaius appeared to be grinning at him. Do you understand, Gordianus? The woman had seen everything-everything-as clearly as if she had been there.

"I contained my emotions as best I could-after all, I was prepared for the worst even before he arrived-but still I wept. Antony did his best to comfort me. In the end I think it was I who comforted him; he and Gaius had been close ever since they were boys, as close as two men can be, even closer in some ways perhaps than Gaius and myself.

"Eventually I told Antony about the woman in my house, and the fact that she had already delivered the news to me two days before. Antony said that was impossible-word had only just reached Caesar, and Caesar would tell Antony before anyone else. I tried to tell him how precisely the woman had seen the details of Gaius's death, but Antony wouldn't listen. We had drunk quite a bit of wine by then, and his senses were muddled. He wasn't in a listening mood. I put him to bed in the guest quarters, then went to find the woman.

"But she was gone. She had vanished somehow, even with Thraso watching her. I realized that I knew nothing about her, not even her name or where she lived, if indeed she had a fixed abode. I thought of sending Thraso to search for her, but at that moment I saw no point. She had told me what I wanted to know, and the knowledge had only served to make me wretched for two sleepless nights before the news arrived from a more trustworthy source. And also… also I was a little frightened of her. She was a witch of some sort. If she could see events in Africa, who knew what other powers she might possess? She herself seemed not to understand her gifts and how to use them. She might be dangerous. I didn't want her in my house."

I nodded, taking in all that Fulvia had told me. "That was the last you saw of her, then?"

Something in her eyes changed, as if a door that had been open was abruptly shut. She seemed evasive. "Thraso reported to me later that she had become something of a fixture in the Forum and the markets, and that people had given her a name: Cassandra. I asked him to find out more about her, but there was very little he could discover, except that others in the city besides myself were availing themselves of Cassandra's gifts."

"Others?"

"You saw them-the women who appeared at her funeral. If you want to find out what they knew about Cassandra, ask them yourself. If you do discover something of interest about her-if you do find out who killed her-come tell me, Gordianus. I'll pay you well for the information. I'd like to know, simply out of curiosity. I've been entirely open with you, after all." As if to contradict her words, the faint smile that had been absent from her face since she began the tale of how she met Cassandra returned, and I had the feeling that she was holding something back from me.

"You never saw her again, face-to-face?"

She shrugged. "Perhaps, briefly. But that meeting was of no particular consequence. There's nothing more of any significance I can tell you." She sighed. "I'm tired now. I think I shall rest a bit before taking dinner. I'm afraid I must say farewell, Gordianus, to you and to your taciturn but very ornamental young son-in-law. Thraso will show the two of you out." She turned her gaze from me to the window. After a moment, her mother did likewise. Together they stared at the framed image of a distant cloud lit by the twilight's last blush of lurid pink against a back drop of lapis lazuli. A scattering of faint, early stars twinkled in the darkening firmament.

The slave showed us down the stairs and through the long hallways. We had reached the soaring atrium when another slave, running at a trot, caught up with us and told us to wait. Thraso raised an eyebrow, then saw the reason we were being detained. At the far end of the hallway we had just traversed, coming toward us at a surprisingly fast clip for a woman her age, was Sempronia. As she drew closer, her gaze fixed on me as if I were a rabbit and she a descending hawk.

With a curt wave she dismissed the slaves. We stood at the base of one of the immense black marble columns that supported the skylight far above our heads. Sempronia drew close to me, speaking in a hoarse whisper. The vast space swallowed up her voice without giving back an echo.

"My daughter was not entirely forthcoming with you, Gordianus."

I raised an eyebrow, afraid that any comment might put her off. For some reason, despite her earlier suspicion, she had decided to trust me. What did she want to tell me?

Sempronia frowned. "My daughter has endured a great deal of suffering in her life. It's because she's so ambitious, of course; even more ambitious than I was at her age." She flashed a thin smile that contained no warmth. "I sometimes think: If only she'd been born a boy. But of course, if that were the case, she'd probably have gotten herself killed already-like Clodius, like Curio-or perhaps not. Fulvia is smarter than either of those fellows were. That's a curse for a woman, to be smarter than her husband. Fulvia's carried that curse twice in a row. Clodius and Curio-at least their ambitions and their dreams matched hers, if not their wits." She shook her head. "Now she's a widow again, with children from both her marriages, children who must be given the best possible chance in the world that's about to be created on some battlefield far from Rome."