I slowly crossed the room. The veiled, hunchbacked figure swayed slightly back and forth as I approached, as if contemplating escape; but escape was impossible. I drew closer and closer, until I was close enough to hear the sound of heavy breathing behind the veil. I raised my hand.
The figure likewise raised a hand and seized my wrist, to stop me from lifting the veil.
I found myself staring, befuddled, at the hand that gripped my wrist. Something was wrong-entirely and completely, terribly wrong. This was not-could not possibly be-the hand of the woman I expected to find behind the veil. Hers would be a smooth, delicate hand, the skin fair and unblemished, even lovelier than that of her mother, who stood trembling with confusion beside her husband at the other end of the room. This hand was coarse, and dark, and bristled with black hairs across the back. This could not possibly be the hand of Rindel, the daughter of Arausio, Zeno's lover!
My heart pounded in my chest. What had I done? How had I arrived at a conclusion so far from the truth, and drawn all these others along with me?
"Unveil her!" wailed Apollonides, his voice trembling with suspense.
There was no other choice. I prepared myself for the shock, the shame, the terrible mistake of Cydimache unveiled.
But at that moment, Zeno, too, must have seen the hand that restrained me. He expelled a strange, barking laugh fraught with anguish. He cried out, "Beloved! It's no use, anymore. Show yourself?"
What did he mean? I somehow sensed that he was not addressing the veiled one, but someone else in the room. There was a movement behind one of the wall hangings. With a shuddering sob, a slender figure stepped out of concealment and stole across the room, into the astonished arms of Arausio and his wife. They cried out in stunned, joyous surprise as they embraced their daughter. Rindel was even more beautiful than I had imagined.
Apollonides, as confounded as I was, stared from Rindel to the veiled one and demanded, "Unveil her, Gordianus!"
I tried to reach for the veil, but the hand that restrained me was strong-stronger than I expected, far stronger than I was. Suddenly the hand released me and the figure drew back, straightening as if shedding the hunch from its back, growing tall and erect. The coarse, dark, hairy-backed hand reached up to the veil, seized it, and tore it away.
I looked into two eyes I had never thought to see again. The face before me wavered and melted as my tears obscured it. I blinked, wiped my eyes, and stared.
"Meto!" I whispered.
On the upper floor, along the wing of Apollonides's house that faced in the direction of the city's main gate, there were five small rooms all in a row, each opening onto the same hallway. In one of those rooms I sat alone with Apollonides.
The room was dark. Its single window provided a view of the faraway city wall outlined against the flames that now burned low among the Roman siegeworks. In many places the flames had dwindled to embers; the fires had done their work. Against this lingering glow I could see the tiny silhouettes of the Massilian archers who restlessly patrolled the battlements. The breach itself was starkly outlined, a flickering fissure in the midst of the jet-black wall.
Apollonides stared out the window. His face, lit only by the distant, dying firelight, was impossible to read. Finally he spoke. "In all the hours you spent beneath his roof, I suppose Hieronymus must have told you the details of his family history." Alone with Apollonides, after the shock we had both received, this was not the first utterance I expected to hear from his lips.
I nodded. "I'd scarcely known him an hour before he told me about the deaths of his father and mother, and about his own years as an orphan and an outcast."
"His father was a Timouchos."
"Yes, Hieronymus told me. But his father lost his fortune-"
"He didn't lose it; it was stolen from him. Not literally stolen, but taken from him nevertheless, by devious means. His competitors conspired to ruin him, and they succeeded. Hieronymus has never known for sure how it happened or who was behind it; he was too young at the time to understand. So was I."
"What are you trying to tell me, First Timouchos?"
"Don't press me, Finder! Let me proceed at my own pace."
I sighed. In the aftermath of Meto's unveiling, Apollonides had taken charge. His soldiers had driven everyone out of Cydimache's room, up the stairway, and into this wing of the house. We had been dispersed into various small rooms, like prisoners confined to their cells, with soldiers standing guard in the hallway outside. In one room was Zeno, in another, Meto, and in another, Davus. Rindel and her parents were in another room. And in the last room, Apollonides and myself.
"It was my father who was behind it. My father destroyed Hieronymus's father and took his fortune. All that followed-the father's suicide, the mother's suicide, Hieronymus's ruin-came about because of what my father did. He never regretted it. And when I grew old enough to examine the family ledgers and eventually discovered the truth, he told me that I shouldn't regret it, either. `Business is business,' he said. `Success shows the favor of the gods. Failure is a mark of the gods' disfavor.' The very fact that he had succeeded so spectacularly meant that he had nothing to atone for, and neither had I. My father died an old man in his own bed, without regrets.
"But when Cydimache was born…" Apollonides sighed. "The first moment I saw her, I thought: this is the gods' punishment for what my father did, that this innocent child should be so hideously disfigured. I should have disposed of her before she drew another breath; any other father would have done so, simply as an act of mercy. But I had my own selfish reasons for letting her live. Over the years she was often sickly, but she survived. She grew, and with every year became… even more hideous. She was a constant reminder of my father's sin. And yet… I couldn't hate her. Don't the philosophers tell us that to love beauty and hate ugliness is natural and right? Yet against all my expectations, against all reason, I came to love her. So I hated Hieronymus instead. I let myself blame him, not just for his own ruin, but for my daughter's deformity. Can you understand that, Finder?"
I said nothing and merely nodded.
"When the priests of Artemis came to the Timouchoi clamoring for a scapegoat, it was I who arranged for the choice to be Hieronymus. I thought that was very clever of me, to finally rid myself of the pest without having to bloody my own hands, and in a way that would not offend the gods, but in fact would be pleasing to them! It seemed fitting that he should be made to follow his father, be forced to step off the Sacrifice Rock into oblivion and out of my guilty dreams forever. Instead… it was my Cydimache who fell from the Sacrifice Rock! Could the gods make their will any more explicit, than to punish me with her death from the very spot where the father of Hieronymus died? My father always told me that the gods loved us. All along, they despised us!"
How strange, I thought, how typical of the gods and their devious sense of humor. I had come to Massilia seeking a lost child who was not lost at all, while Apollonides had lost a child and did not even know it, and we had both discovered the truth in the same instant.
"Finder, when you told me, on Hieronymus's terrace, that you had seen a man and woman on the Sacrifice Rock and that the woman had fallen-how aloof I was, how uncaring, not knowing… it was my Cydimache!" He sucked in a shuddering breath. "Hieronymus said she jumped. Your son-in-law said she was pushed. Which was it, Finder?"
"I don't know."
"But Zeno knows."
I shifted nervously. "Do you intend to torture him, First Timouchos?"
"Why, when I have you to find out the truth for me?"
"Me, First Timouchos?"
"They call you Finder, don't they? Domitius told me all about you; how men are compelled by some strange power to tell you the truth. This was a gift the gods gave you."