who'd risen from nothing to become the companion of Caesar himself, and for some reason he'd thrown it all away and chosen to side with the likes of Milo and Domitius and Pompey. What a fool! The joke was on me, of course. Meto was spying for Caesar all along.'
'And he approached you, to turn you into a spy for Caesar as well?'
'Not then; not yet. I had no idea of what he was up to until Milo exposed him as a spy. Domitius's men chased him over the wall into the sea, and supposedly he drowned. I thought no more about him. The siege went on. And then, the day after the battering-ram attack, the day after… Cydimache's death… Meto reappeared in Massilia. Or I should say, Massilia saw the reappearance of the ragged soothsayer that had sometimes been Meto's disguise. He sought me out and took a great risk in revealing himself to me. He wanted me to help him infiltrate this house. In return, he promised Caesar's favor. I was already in terrible danger, with Cydimache dead and Rindel taking her place. Helping a Roman spy would put me in even greater danger, and yet it seemed as if the gods had sent Meto to me. In the long run, my only hope was to somehow gain Caesar's favor; and here was the means to do that.
'Once I decided to trust Meto, I told him everything, even about Cydimache and how Rindel had taken her place. It was Meto's masterstroke to sometimes masquerade as Cydimache himself. If Rindel could do it, so could he. The two of them took turns. As Cydimache, Meto could move freely about the house and could even come and go, so long as I escorted him. Your son is a natural actor, Gordianus. Far more convincing than Rindel; she always overdid Cydimache's limp. But Meto was uncanny! And he made the most of the masquerade. If the daughter of the First Timouchos should choose to sit outside the room where the war council met, no one dared to question her. Quite the opposite! Brave soldiers would scurry past her like mice past a cat. They wanted no contact with the veiled monster!'
I shook my head. 'A mad risk!'
'But a brilliant one. I've never met a more daring man than your son, Gordianus, or a more fearless one.'
'He turned you into a spy, Zeno.'
'A spy, perhaps, but not a traitor. In the end, you'll see that it was I who always had the best interests of Massilia at heart, not Apollonides.'
'You cast your lot with Caesar. Yet you sailed out to fight against Caesar's fleet-'
'I had no choice. It was my duty to command that ship. I'm not a coward, and I've never betrayed my comrades! I fought as long and hard as any other Massilian that day.'
'Did you? Even knowing that if you never returned, your beloved Rindel would be left to fend for herself in Apollonides's house?'
'Rindel wasn't alone; Meto promised to look after her. Had I died that day, Meto would have returned Rindel secretly and safely to her father's house, and Apollonides would never have known the part she played.'
'I see. And Meto would have been left to perform the role of your bereaved widow full time, conveniently struck mute with grief, no doubt. So much deceit!' I rubbed my eyes wearily. 'Meto revealed himself to you, put his trust in you-yet he never showed himself to me, never gave me a sign that he was still alive. Outside Massilia, at the shrine of xoanon Artemis-it was Meto I met that day, wasn't it, in his disguise as the soothsayer Rabidus? He deceived me.'
Zeno shrugged. 'If Meto thought that revealing himself to you posed too great a risk, I think you should defer to his judgment. He's kept himself alive this long, against enormous odds. He knows what he's doing.'
'Does he?' I shook my head. I stirred and made ready to leave. 'Haven't you forgotten something, Gordianus?'
'I don't think so.'
'You never asked me what happened on the Sacrifice Rock.'
'I thought you answered that already. You chased Cydimache to the summit. I suppose she pulled off the ring-the skystone ring you gave her on your wedding day-and threw it down. A gesture of renunciation, before killing herself. Is that right?'
'Yes. Almost.'
'What do you mean?'
'She pulled off the ring. She threw it down. I should have remembered to pick it up later, but it all happened so quickly. Then she lurched toward the precipice.'
I frowned. 'But there was a bit of a struggle, wasn't there? We all saw that.'
'Yes. Her cloak and her veils were loose upon her; it was hard to get hold of her. Even so, I did my best to stop her. I managed to grab her-'
'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.
XXIII
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
