“You are rooted to Rome, but you spend much time away,” she said. “Your woman is high-placed.”
“What other sort of woman would I have?” I said, disappointed. “And what senator doesn’t spend half his time away from Rome?”
Furia smiled slyly. “She is higher than you. And there is something about her that you fear.” This took me aback. Julia was patrician. But fear her? Then I remembered what there was about Julia that I feared; I feared her uncle, Julius Caesar.
“Go on.”
“Oh, you want a special fortune told?” Now her smile was openly malicious. She gathered up her things and replaced them in the pot and covered them. Then she put away the tray. “Very well. But remember that you requested this.”
Now she settled herself and her face went blank, hieratic, like the face of an Asian priestess.
“Give me something to hold that is yours. Have you something that has belonged to you for a long time?”
All I had with me were my clothes, a small purse, my sandals, and the dagger I usually hid in my tunic when I went out during uncertain times. I took out the dagger.
“Will this do?”
Her eyes glowed eerily. “Perfectly. I won’t have to use a knife of my own.” That sounded ominous. She took the dagger and held it for a moment.
“You’ve killed with this.”
“Only to preserve my own life,” I said.
“You needn’t justify yourself to me. I don’t care if you murdered your wife with it. Give me your right hand.”
I held it out. She took it and gazed into my palm for a long time and then, before I could pull it back, she slashed the tip of the blade across the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb. The blade was so sharp that I felt no pain, just a thrum like a plucked lyre string that went all through my body. I made to jerk my hand away.
“Be still!” she hissed, and it was as if I was rooted to the spot. I had lost all power of motion. Swiftly, she drew the blade across her own palm, then she gripped our two hands together, with the hilt of my dagger between them. The bone grip grew slick with blood.
I was almost beyond astonishment, but she further amazed me. She raised her free hand to the neck of her gown and jerked it down, baring her left breast. It was larger than I would have expected, even on so Junoesque a woman, full and slightly pendulous. In the dimness the white of her flesh was almost luminous against the black fabric. She drew my hand toward her, and held both hands and dagger against the warm softness of her breast.
For a moment I thought, half-crazily, This beats gutting a sacrificial pig any day! Then she began to speak, in a rapid monotone, running her words together so that they were difficult to follow as her brilliant green eyes lost focus.
“You are a man who draws death like a lodestone draws iron. You are Pluto’s favorite, his hunting dog to chase down the guilty, a male harpy to rend the flesh of the damned and blight their days, as yours will be blighted.” She released my hand, almost throwing it back at me. As I fumbled the dagger back into its sheath, she contemplated the spiderweb of our mingled blood that nearly covered her breast, as if she read some significance in the pattern. A heavy drop gathered on the bulbous nub of her nipple, mine or hers, who could tell?
“All your life will be the death of what you love,” she said.
Unnerved as I seldom had been in my life, I scrambled to my feet. This was no mere fortune-telling saga. This was a genuine striga.
“Woman, have you cast a spell on me?” I demanded, unashamed at my shaking voice.
“I have what I need. Good day to you, Senator.”
I fumbled beneath my toga, trying to extract some coins from my purse. Finally, I cast the whole thing before her. She did not pick it up, but looked at me with her mocking smile.
“Come back any time, Senator.”
I stumbled toward the curtain, but even as I grasped it she spoke.
“One more thing, Senator Metellus.”
I turned. “What is it, witch?”
“You will live for a long, long time. And you will wish that you had died young.”
I staggered out of the booth into a day that was no longer wholesome. All the long way home, passersby avoided me as one who carried some deadly contagion.
5
BY MIDAFTERNOON I WAS OVER the worst of my fright and wondering what had happened. If, indeed, anything had happened at all. I was a little ashamed of myself, panicking like some bumpkin at the words of a peasant fortune-teller. And what had she said anyway? Just the sort of gibberish such frauds always used to dupe the credulous. Live a long, long time, would I? That was a safe enough prediction, since I certainly wouldn’t be able to confront her with it should it prove false.