“So you couldn’t make out her nationality?”
She shook her head. “I have never seen anyone quite like her. She is quite dark, as I suppose Julia told you, but very different from a Nubian or Ethiopian. Her features are very small and fine, and her hair very straight. She has an elaborate vocabulary of bodily gestures, but they are unlike any I know. Her accent is very peculiar.”
“What about her astrological procedure?” I asked.
“Quite conventional. I would have expected from her appearance that she might have some unique interpretation of the signs, but it was just as it has been for centuries since the art came out of Babylon.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Either she learned the art since coming from her homeland, or the art spread from Babylon in all directions and is practiced identically in lands we have never heard of.”
“Did she strike you as being credible? I ask this because I am investigating a fraudulent scheme that involves falsified horoscopes.”
“Oh? You must tell me all about that, but as for the woman, I confess that I am not sure. I spoke of her odd gestures. It is amazing how much we interpret from the language of gestures. Here in the west we share the greater part of our vocabulary of gestures. A Greek, a Roman, a Spaniard, or a Gaul can converse and share a large amount of their unspoken communication. We recognize things like passion or untruthfulness as much through interpretation of these signs as through the words we hear. There will be differences between peoples, of course, but we share more than we differ.”
“I think I understand,” I told her. “When I have been speaking with a Gaul for some time, I am pretty confident whether he is lying to me, or angling for favors, or is afraid of me. Germans are much harder to read. They are more alien to us than Gauls.”
“You have it exactly,” she said. “I have seen the same thing in Alexandria, where black slaves are brought from the interior. When they are newly arrived their habitual gestures are as strange as anything else about them. A nod may mean dismay rather than agreement. Where we look for hands folded together they wave to the side instead. A shrug of the shoulders may denote happiness, and fear may be expressed by slapping the chest with the palms. That is how it was with Ashthuva. I observed her closely, but when she spoke everything was just enough off-key to prevent me from making a confident evaluation of her truthfulness or motivation.”
Echo appeared and announced the arrival of a group of people whose names I recognized vaguely as being among Rome’s intellectual elite, which is to say people without political significance. I rose to go and she apologized for having discovered so little.
“Callista, I cannot imagine anyone I would rather have studying this matter. Your knowledge is matched only by your breadth of insight.”
“You are far too kind. Oh, I must clarify something. In this unspoken language of gesture, which includes things like posture, physical address, attitude, and so forth, there is one exception to the cultural division.”
“And what is that?” I asked.
“The language of sexual allure and seduction. Ashthuva was using it last night.”
“But you were a group of women except for the escort—not Julia?” I was aghast, but she laughed almost girlishly.
“Oh, no, Senator, have no fear on that account. Ashthuva was trying to seduce me.”
7
I have always been able to summon up some courage when it was absolutely necessary, as it was now. I have dealt with unpredictable Gauls and Britons, fearsome Germans, ferocious Spaniards, treacherous Syrians and Egyptians, and even a dangerous Greek or two, although those were really Macedonians, which is not quite the same thing. Now it was time to dredge up that courage once more. I was about to call on Servilia.
This was an age of dangerous women, and Servilia was more dangerous than most because she was more subtle than most. I knew she was ambitious because she was trying to win Caesar and you couldn’t get more ambitious than that. Calpurnia stood in her way, but I doubt that she ever let a mere wife thwart her plans. There was also Cleopatra, but she was a foreigner whom Caesar would never marry. Servilia on the other hand was a patrician and eminently suitable, could she but convince him.
Their relationship was one of long standing, dating from a time when Caesar was nothing but a debt-ridden young politician whom nobody credited with much of a future. Yet Servilia saw something in him, or perhaps he was just a formidable lover. Caesar’s dalliances were legendary, and almost all of his conquests were wives of senators. When news of his affair with Cleopatra reached Rome certain Forum wags proposed a day of thanksgiving to Venus that this didn’t mean yet another senatorial cuckold.