Some things changed, or looked as if they were going to, and for the better. Perhaps Cneve had a point. The consul had managed to sneak a few new laws in before his term of office ended; debts were not cancelled, as some had hoped, but were reduced and rescheduled - that was some help to Velthur - and taxes were reduced, and citizen rights extended to more cities and citizens, though not to Cneve. The wealthy hated it, of course, all the more when they found that another law they'd overlooked prevented them running their huge land holdings with only a slave staff, so that they had to hire free workers who cost real money; they growled, and whined like chained and beaten dogs, and made dark comments about the fate of upstarts, and how the Gracchi came to a bad end.
The next year we had a new suffect consul. I read the signs for him. After the mixed omens of the previous year I was relieved that this time the reading was unambiguous, though a single hen chuckling to itself is the weakest of all signs, if you follow the Rule of Four, unless you accept such things as a horse taking the road out of the city, or a dog barking, and if you did, you'd get so many different readings you'd never know which was a true one. I told him the gods approved; I didn't have to tell him with what lack of enthusiasm.
Still that sense of something awry followed me. The sunsets that year were more glowing, more fiery than they'd ever been; they seemed to glow for hours, filling half the night with raw red like dying embers. Some nights purple and orange streaked the sky; at other times I saw the whole sky dark and sullen, the colour of blood.
***
Cneve told me I was getting old and cranky. You've hit your fifth lustrum, he said, and you're starting to feel the whispering ghosts creeping up on you from behind. It happened to his great-uncle, apparently; he started seeing his father in the street, talking to his mother in the house. Which was odd, because they had both died years ago. But I wasn't imagining the omens. They were real; other people had seen them, though perhaps not everyone had recognised them for what they were.
Cneve was getting older, too, and though Thupeltha was younger than he was, they had I think given up hope of having children. He asked me for an augury, once, but I wouldn't take it; if the auspices were unfavourable, I don't think I could have told him.
I realised, eventually, I was becoming a prophet. I don't think there has been a prophet among our people since Tarchon. We became old; Tarchon's bright knowledge faded, and the world that for him was full of gods and meaning became a dull, grey place where we played guessing games with thunder and woodpeckers and looked up what things meant in books. Our world was feeble, dying, fading away into the dry gloom of the hinthials and the death demons, and the hard iron of Rome was forging a new one. But as lamps sometimes flare up as the last thumbnail's worth of wick burns through, prophecy sputtered and flared in me, burning wild and pale as Etruria died.
Whenever I walk out of the city, I pass a funeral; the great roads, the Appian, the Flaminian, the Aurelian, are lined with tombs, the ghost-shadow of the city. Every night sees an exodus of the dead, the shimmer of processing torches and the glare of pyres in the cremation grounds; horns and trumpets bay and growl. In the day the fires burn lower, and mourners return to the city, faces running with their own blood; and there are always some, more now every year, who don't keep to the old custom of night funerals, but come by day, still with torches, which burn a heat haze in the daylight air - the demon-mimes and trumpeters in front, and behind, the inhuman ranks of the ancestors, cold masks and sightless, bringing their new neighbour to his long home.
They were burning some great man, a tribune I think; the pyre was built high, attended by a great crowd, some who had loved him, I suppose, and some just come for the spectacle, and some, perhaps, thinking they had better show up if they wanted the heir to look after their interests in the Curia. Suddenly, the sky seemed to be full of crows, flying slowly but straight, from all directions, and converging on the pyre.
How could it be that no one else had seen them? I shouted out to the bystanders. One or two looked up; more turned to look at me, shrugged, and turned back to watch the ceremony. The pyre hadn't been lit yet; the dead man lay on it as on a couch, wound in a toga of spotless white edged by the purple of his rank, and propped up on one side so that his face could be seen, cold and grey.
The crows fell on him. The crows feasted. The spotless white turned black. And yet the bystanders watched, and did nothing, until two of the dead man's servants came to me, and took me rather roughly by the elbows, and walked me away.
***
The college decided I should be sent to the country to recover; I was happy enough to stay with Velthur, and since the college paid for my upkeep during my convalescence, I was able to help Velthur a little with his finances.
There were no crows. There never had been any crows.
They were very understanding. I returned to Rome late that year, and nothing was said about my absence. I started taking a few auguries, only on small matters, nothing of much moment, and all went well; classical stuff, clear and ordinary omens. A single thunderclap of approbation, a raven croaking on the right in disapproval; simple, straightforward answers.
My colleagues said nothing about the incident at all, but I noticed after a while how they made sure I was kept occupied; an invitation to the theatre, an anniversary feast, a literary symposium. They were friendly in that slightly cloying way I remembered from after my wife's death, with which I found myself ill at ease, though I realised it was not insincere. I'd often complained how my Etruscan origins kept me at a distance from them, even the plebeian augurs; but now, in the face of my disastrous breakdown, they made me one of them, as if I'd been born to one of the great families.
Marcus Tullius was particularly assiduous. I suppose in one way we were much alike - he came from a provincial family, from a hill town to the south, so like me he was not a native Roman. He felt himself an outsider - and he felt it deeply; he was always striving to excel, in oratory, in wealth, in taste, in style - as if excellence could make him Roman. Of course it never could. But he struck me as rather cold; a man who had married twice and loved neither of his wives, who knew everyone but had no real friends. He kept a philosopher as a sort of house pet, the way other people keep a sparrow or a tortoise.
But he was writing something, he said, about the traditions of divination among the different peoples - the Greeks, for instance, and their oracular dreams, and he'd heard the Assyrians foretold the future from the stars. He knew, and he put this quite sensitively, that my forebears had been Etruscan, and wondered if I might have heard some of the old traditions of that people? So we came to work together, a little, recording some of the old stories.
He only once showed his feelings. I was with him the day of the March kalends, having brought some old texts with me to translate to him; he seemed dull and low-spirited, and I was about to excuse myself, sensing he had other things on his mind, when he lay down his tablet, and shook his head.
"This is not an auspicious day," he said. That puzzled me, for in the Roman calendar it is the day after the Kalends that is more usually thought a bad day to start a journey or a new project, and I said so.
"It is the ninth day of sorrow in this house," he told me. "My daughter..."
His voice cracked, and I saw him swallow, and turn his head away. When he turned it back he was blinking, and his eyes seemed very wet.
None of us had known. We knew, I think, that she'd been ill; we knew there was some bad feeling between his new, very young, wife and his daughter. I took refuge in a conventional phrase, which now, I forget; that the gods take those they love -"those the gods love die young," as Menander puts it - or perhaps that she rested with the gods of her house.
"The gods? There are none," he said, bitter and almost angry.
"But the omens..."
Though I never finished what I'd meant to say, I had said too much.
"You can't really believe in omens? All that nonsense. Did the sacred chickens eat their
corn? They're chickens. What else would they do?"
"But our training..."
"...is political. We are the rulers of Rome; have you really never realised?"
I couldn't say it had ever occurred to me.
"If the auspices are unfavourable, no law can be passed, no tribune or consul can be elected, no war can be declared or peace concluded. It's the augur who reads the auspices; it's the augur who rules the city."
"The Curia rules the city," I said. "And the consuls."
"But who rules the consuls?"
He laughed, a sharp sound between a snort and a small cough, and suddenly his carefully composed philosopher's expression was back on his face, and his voice was level again, though it trembled a little like a singer's when he is about to run out of breath.
"You mustn't think badly of me. I try not to let these passions move me... but she was very dear to me."
"I must go," I said, and I did, without ceremony. That was the last time I visited Marcus Tullius, and when we next met in the college, he was distantly polite.
***
I lived quietly for the next few months, working a little, visiting Cneve occasionally, accepting my colleagues' invitations with neither great enthusiasm nor distaste, but always leaving early, before the drinking games began and the flirtations became too embarrassing to turn down.
I told Cneve about Marcus Tullius' views on divination. (I mentioned no names, of course.) He seemed surprised that I had been shocked by them. I was even more shocked by that.
"Spurinna," he said, smiling, "haven't you learned anything?"
"Obviously he hasn't." Thupeltha had come through from the kitchen, and put her arms round her husband from behind. "His gods don't tell him anything worth knowing."
"You're about to tell me if I was that good a soothsayer, I'd have got rich betting on the chariot races, aren't you? They all do."
"No," she said. "I was going to tell you something else completely."
Cneve laughed. "All those omens, and not one to tell you..."
They were both laughing, and I became slightly irritated by whatever the joke was, till at last Thupeltha told me; Cneve was to become a father, at last.
Fate had another surprise for me. At the end of the year, the chief augur asked me whether I would take the auspices for the consuls once again. I'd not expected it. I asked for time to consider; but I got the impression that 'no' would be the wrong answer, and so, having made myself absent for an afternoon, saying I would think things over, I accepted the assignment, though not without trepidation.
***
I recognised him at once; this would be the third time I'd read the omens for him as consul. He knew me, too, and greeted me with unaffected pleasure.
I have perhaps not seen much of him, but I like what I see. He's a balding man, whose strong nose gives him a stern look, but I'm not fooled; there's kindness in his eyes, and the beginnings of an arch smile at the corners of his mouth. Marcus Tullius tolerates the folly of mankind because he feels superior to it; the consul, because he's amused by it.
"I'm glad it's you," he said. "I hoped it would be."
I was grateful for that politeness, till he told me why.
"I heard that you had had strange visions," he said. "I know there were some doubts expressed..."
I bowed my head. I could give him no answer.
Then he said; "I've been having dreams."
He dreamt, he said, of flying above the clouds. He dreamt that he spread his arms and flew from the Tarpeian rock, and the air bore him up. He dreamt that he flew among stars whose sparks like sharp shards of light stung his flesh, stars that were cold and shone like ice.
Many dreams are false. Some are true. It was a dream of death, a dream of the spirit that leaves the body at the last breath, that takes its flight, and I hoped that it was a false dream.
"You're ambitious," I said.
"I shouldn't be?"
"Ambitious for Rome. And your dreams reflect that," I said. It was not completely a lie.
The omens, this time, were simple. A woodpecker's hollow tapping sounded deep and strong in the stillness, and we saw a hawk hover, its wings beating so fast they blurred in the air. No thunder, no ravens, no ambiguity.
"Good," he said, when I confirmed what he surely already knew. "I still have work to do." He told me a little about that work; Rome at peace now, after so many years of civil strife.
"You remember Marius?" I did. "He left so much undone. But what a man he was."
I thought of those years of madness, when factions fought their battles in the streets of Rome, when everyone lived in fear of proscription, or the order to suicide. Now at least there was peace, even in Gaul. There would be no return to those evil days.
We talked a little before I left. That was unusual; most people are glad to see us go after the omen has been confirmed, but I felt, perhaps, he didn't often get to talk simply, man to man, these days, and was glad for the chance. He found out I was a widower.
"No children?" he asked, and when I said no, confessed his own sadness; he had no son of his own. (Some people, later, said he had a son when he was with the army, in Egypt. Many men do have children with the local girls, but they're not the sort of children you can bring back to Rome, not the sort who can inherit.) He was thinking of adopting one of his relatives, a young nephew, I think, and he suggested I might like to take the omens for that, and see whether the gods approved.
***
That was the beginning of January. Well, of course it was; that's when consuls are elected, and give their names to the year. A couple of weeks later, Cneve's son was born; a fat child, with a gurgling happy voice and strong little fists, with which he thumped his mother's breasts when the milk was slow to come.
But though the year had begun well, the month turned suddenly cold, and I heard reports of strange omens; horses that starved to death in the fields, though there was more than enough for them to eat, and snakes found in the foundations of a fallen house in the Subura.
February came, and with it the Lupercalia. It's usually a good-humoured celebration, as a fertility rite should be, with young men running naked in the streets and women, even quite respectable well-born women, jostling to grab hold of them; but this year it seemed no one could summon up much enthusiasm; it was too cold, and too wet. (Thupeltha came last year; this year, jokingly, she told me she didn't need to.)
There's a darker side to the Lupercalia; the sacrifice of a dog, and the blooding of the wolf-runners. This year both the consuls were to run with the wolves, though they were older than the runners usually are; and my consul, as I liked to think of him, made one of the goat sacrifices.
I watched him sprinkle the salt and meal on the animal's head, and turn it to face east, towards the pale sunrise, before he wiped his knife blade all the way down its back, skimming its hair. But the rest I did not see; something black and heavy had fallen on me, like a prophecy or drowning, and the runners had already set off by the time I recovered.
I was lying on the ground. Someone had lain me on my side and put a folded cloak under my head, and there were people leaning over me, dark heads against grey sky.
"My augur!" said a voice, and it was a wolf talking, white teeth and long tongue, a wolf with a man's legs and a man's torso, naked and shining with oil and blood. I shook my head violently, and felt someone holding my arms down as I struggled to rise.
"He's had a seizure," someone said, and the wolf came closer.
"I should be said if anything happened to you," the wolf said, sitting on his haunches next to me.
"Take it off!" someone yelled, and I wondered what more there was to take off when you were naked, till the wolf pulled off its own head.
"My consul," I said, flooded with the relief of recognition. Then I remembered the things I had seen, the things I knew, and I said, "Beware." I must have said it more loudly than I knew - I was not yet in control of myself - for I heard someone from the crowd say "Beware o
f the big bad wolf," and there was laughter. "Beware," I said again, "you have a month. There is danger, it will come this month."
"Beware the Greek Kalends," some joker shouted, which as every fool knows is the same date that the cows will come home and the pigs learn how to fly. I hate to say it, but the consul smiled too, though softly, and then he grasped my shoulder roughly with one hand in farewell, and turned away.
***
You never stop being an augur. It's one of the few jobs in Rome which is for life; an augur never retires, an augur can never be asked to resign. I was in no danger of being exiled. The worst thing was the infinite patience of the others. They treated me like a sick child, asking after my health, bringing infusions their wives or slaves had made, talking about approved, inoffensive subjects, never mentioning the Lupercalia or the consul.
I wished I had not sold the orchard. I needed somewhere to go to be quiet. Instead I found myself incessantly walking the streets of Rome, as if the rhythm of placing one foot in front of the other, then the other in front of the first, would drive the false visions out of my head. I wore myself out walking. I walked from the Forum all the way to the Pincian, in the north, where among orchards and gardens I found tranquillity, of a sort; I walked the busy streets of the Subura and the cattle market, letting myself sink into the anonymity of the city. I walked the seven hills, I walked the Field of Mars and out to Tiber Island, and I walked, one day, to the Theatre of Pompey.
I saw him there, my consul. I saw him check, as if he had not decided whether to pass me by, or stop to greet me.
"Beware," I said.