Last Seen in Massilia (23 page)

“But she slipped from your grasp.”

“Not exactly.” His voice abruptly changed timbre, became deeper and slower. It seemed almost as if a third presence had entered the room, as if someone else were speaking through his lips. “Cydimache wanted to die. I’m sure of that. What else could she have intended when she climbed up the rock? She wanted to die, and I tried to save her. You see, she was—she had shown the first signs—no one else knew yet. We hadn’t even told her father.”

“What are you saying?”

“Cydimache was pregnant with my child.”

I drew a sharp breath. No wonder he had tried to stop her! She was carrying the child that would purchase his membership in the Timouchoi.

“I did my best to save her—and she wanted to die—up until the instant I had hold of her. Her veil dropped, and I saw her eyes. She’d changed her mind. She wanted to die; and then, at the last possible instant,
she changed her mind
…”

“But it was too late. She was too far over the edge.”

“No! Don’t you understand? Her veil dropped. I saw her eyes—and her face. That hideous face! She changed her mind,
and so did I.
She wanted to die, then decided to live. And in that same instant…”

“You decided…not to save her.”

“Yes.”

“You pushed her.”

His voice seemed to come from a deep well. “Yes. I pushed her.”

I drew a deep breath. Hieronymus had been right, up to a point. So had Davus.

I had discovered what Apollonides had sent me to discover. My reward would be a reunion with my son in the next room.

Zeno’s voice returned to its normal timbre. He ended the conversation as he began it. “I should have had you killed, I suppose. You were a dangerous witness. But early on, Meto explained to me who you were. His father, come to look for him here in Massilia! That complicated matters. You can thank your son that you’re still alive. Give him my regards.” He flashed a sardonic smile and then turned to gaze out the window.

The window in Meto’s cell also looked out on the breached wall and also had bars across it. What sort of man, I thought, has a home with prison cells on the upper floor? A man like Apollonides. The kind of man who rises to become first citizen of a city-state.

The fires amid the Roman siegeworks had died even lower, but because of the particular angle of the view from Meto’s window, the breach in the wall appeared brightly lit, its jagged edges seeming to glow as if traced with a fiery nimbus. The wall itself and the silhouettes of pacing archers were utterly black.

When Meto had unveiled himself in Cydimache’s room, I had not cried out in jubilation, had not embraced him. Why not? Because the moment had been too shocking, I thought. And yet the parents of Rindel, equally stunned, had immediately gathered their daughter into their arms and wept tears of joy.

In Cydimache’s room, I had restrained my emotions, I told myself, because the circumstances had been so strange, the presence of others too inhibiting. But now I was alone with Meto. Why did I not rush to embrace him?

Why, for that matter, did he not embrace me and weep for joy? Because he had not feared for me as I had feared for him, I reasoned. He had known my whereabouts from the moment I arrived at the shrine of
xoanon
Artemis outside Massilia. He never thought me lost, never had cause to believe that my life was in immediate danger. But was that true? I easily could have died—by any reasonable expectation
should
have died—in the flooded tunnel. The priests of Artemis might have had me executed for climbing onto the Sacrifice Rock. Apollonides might have had me killed at any time, on a whim. I had been in some degree of danger every moment since I had left Rome, and so had Davus. What did Meto have to say about that? Was he so inured to danger that it counted for nothing, even when it threatened his own father?

He smiled broadly at the sight of me, stepped forward and clapped his hands on my shoulders, but he did not embrace me. Instead, he reached for a great lump of fabric on the floor and picked it up, grinning as he had when he was a boy and had something to show off. He was dressed only in a light tunic, I noticed. The thing in his hands was the costume he had worn in his guise as Cydimache.

“Look at this, Papa. It’s really ingenious. I made it myself. Amazing what you can do when you have to rely on your own resources.” He held the thing up so that I could see that the sumptuous, voluminous gown and the veils were all sewn together in one piece. “It slips over my head, you see, and everything instantly falls into place, even the hunch on my back—that’s just a bit of extra padding. No tucking or tying or bothering with veils coming loose. One minute, I’m Cydimache the hunchback, and the next—” He snapped the garment in the air and turned it inside out. Now it was a ragged cloak with a cowl. “Now I’m Rabidus the soothsayer, who comes and goes as he pleases.”

“Very impressive,” I said, and coughed. My throat was dry.

“You could use some wine, Papa. Here, I’ll pour you a cup. It’s good stuff. Falernian, I think.”

“I’m surprised Apollonides has supplied you with wine at all, let alone a fine vintage.”

“Apollonides may be a fool, but even
he
has begun to realize that it’s only a matter of time—hours, maybe—before Massilia belongs to Caesar. It will behoove him to hand me over to Caesar alive and well.”

“You’re relying on his shrewdness as a politician to keep you alive, then? Apollonides is also a father who’s just received a terrible shock.”

“And so are you! To Caesar!” Meto clinked his wine cup against mine and grinned, and seemed oblivious of the cruel difference between the shocks that had buffeted Apollonides and me. I had never
seen him in such a reckless, giddy mood. It was because Caesar was coming, I thought. Soon Caesar would be here, and Meto’s beloved mentor would be very pleased with all that Meto had done on his behalf.

I drank the wine and was glad for its warmth.

Meto paced the room, too excited to be still. “You must have a thousand questions, Papa. Let me think; where to begin?”

“I’m not Caesar, Meto. You don’t have to report to me.”

He smiled as if I had made a weak joke, then proceeded as if I hadn’t spoken. “Let’s see; how did I get in and out of Massilia? By swimming, of course.”

“You couldn’t swim when you were a boy.”

“But I can now. Caesar himself taught me to swim. It’s really nothing to swim across the harbor here, or even from the harbor all the way out to the islands offshore.”

“But the current—”

He shrugged dismissively. “And a single man, swimming at night, especially on a moonless night, can easily get past sentries. I quickly learned which sections of the harbor were least heavily guarded, and the Massilians have been terribly careless about keeping shut the gates that open onto the wharves. So it was no great challenge for me to get in and out of Massilia.”

“But when Domitius and his men chased you onto the wall and forced you to jump into the sea—Domitius was certain that you were dead.”

He shook his head. “The fall
could
have killed me—if I didn’t know how to dive or if I’d struck a rock. But I headed for that particular stretch of wall because I’d scouted it out beforehand and I knew it was the safest place to make a dive. I knew I might have to make a quick escape one day, and I planned ahead accordingly.”

“You’d been wounded by a spear.”

“Merely grazed.”

“They shot arrows at you.”

“They missed. Not a decent archer among them!”

“But they saw your body floating off on the current.”

“Not my body; my tunic. When I struck the water it inflated with air. I tied it off so that it would float for a while, and at that distance they mistook it for a body. People see what they want to see, and the wise spy takes advantage of that; something Caesar taught me. Meanwhile, I held my breath and swam along the wall toward the harbor. By the time I surfaced, they had no idea of where to look for me. The sun was in their eyes, and they were already looking elsewhere. I took a quick breath and ducked back under the surface. I kept swimming until I crossed the harbor mouth and reached the shore on the far side.”

I stared at the dregs in my cup. “Who sent me the anonymous message telling me that you were dead? Was it Domitius?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m almost certain it was Milo. I thought I could win him over to Caesar, but that was a very serious miscalculation on my part. Milo lacks the imagination to see the future; all he can think of is getting back into Pompey’s good graces. That’s why he almost got me killed. If he could flush out a dangerous spy, that would earn him points with the Great One. But Milo wanted to capture me alive, and he was never satisfied that Domitius’s men had killed me. He suspected—correctly—that I was not only still alive but back in Massilia, and he wanted to flush me out again. How better to do that than to lure my dear father to Massilia, where sooner or later I would surely try to make contact with you. Those were Milo’s men following you and Davus whenever you left the scapegoat’s house. They weren’t interested in you; they were hoping to catch me. Once, they almost did. It was after you left the house of Gaius Verres and paused in the street near that black market.”

“Yes, we saw you, dressed in your soothsayer’s rags. But then you vanished.”

“I had to! Milo’s men appeared out of nowhere. They very nearly caught me.”

I nodded slowly. “And that was you, as well, waiting at the foot of the Sacrifice Rock on the day of the sea battle.”

“Yes.” He shook his head disdainfully. “I couldn’t believe you had the temerity to climb up there! Did you imagine that no one could see
you? I watched you for hours, expecting at any moment to see the priests of Artemis come drag you off. When you finally started to climb down, my only thought was to get to you first and try to hide you somewhere—but once again, I had to flee. Apollonides’s troops arrived to whisk you back to his house. Just as well, as that was the safest place for you. Otherwise the mob in the street would have torn you limb from limb, along with the scapegoat.”

I was not satisfied. “Surely, Meto, you could have made contact with me at some point. After Domitius told me that you were dead, I went through…a very bad time. I didn’t leave Hieronymus’s house for days. If you couldn’t come to me in the flesh, then you might have sent a message. Not even a written message, merely some sign that you were still alive. The anguish I felt—”

“I’m sorry, Papa, but it was simply too dangerous. And frankly, I’ve been too busy. You have no idea!” He smiled at me indulgently. “That day, when you and Davus stepped inside the temple of
xoanon
Artemis outside the city—where I was accustomed to leave certain secret reports for Trebonius, if you must know—and I heard two voices babbling on and realized it was you, I thought: What in Hades is Papa doing
here
? Well, obviously, you’d come to find me. But there was nothing for you to do here except get in the way. So I tried to warn you off, tried to send you back to Rome.”

“While still disguised as the soothsayer!” I snapped, a flash of anger finally creeping into my voice.

“I could hardly have revealed myself to you in front of those two guards. They’d have told everyone in the camp—and who knows what spies the Massilians have among our own men? No one but Trebonius knew of my mission and my disguise. Absolute secrecy was essential.”

“You could have revealed yourself to
me,
Meto!”

He sighed. “No, Papa. My only thought was to send you back to Rome where you’d be safe. After I left you on your way to the Roman camp, I doubled back and went directly to Trebonius; he promised me that he’d send you straight home. Even if you managed to thwart him, at the very worst I thought you’d simply spend the rest of the siege in the Roman camp, pestering Trebonius. I never imagined you’d actu
ally find a way to get inside Massilia! And yet, here you are. I have to give you credit for ingenuity. Like father, like son, eh? Perhaps Caesar should use
you
as a secret agent.”

At that moment, the very idea filled me with such loathing that the great thundercrack that abruptly shook the room seemed, for a peculiar instant, to be a manifestation of my own fury. But the thunderous booming and the earthshaking vibrations came from outside the room. Meto rushed to the window. “Great Venus!” he muttered.

Billowing clouds of dust, weirdly backlit by the lingering flames, rose from the wall—or more precisely, from the places where sections of the wall had previously stood. The fissure now gaped far wider than before. On either side of the original breach more sinkholes had abruptly given way, swallowing all the rubble piled into the breach, along with the makeshift structures meant to shore up the wall and any of the engineers who were still working there. Then, as we watched, a bastion tower caved in on one side of the growing breach, to the sound of crashing stones and the screams of archers on the collapsing battlements.

Where before there had been a breach that by some supreme effort might have remained defensible, now there gaped an enormous opening in the wall, leaving the main square of the city completely vulnerable. The walls of Massilia were hopelessly breached.

From within the house of Apollonides there were sounds of men shouting and running through the hallways. Abruptly the door opened and the First Timouchos stood staring at us, wearing a stunned expression.

My time alone with Meto was over.