"And what of Rindel's parents?"
"Rindel wanted to send them a message, to let them know that she was alive and well, but I told her it was too dangerous."
"So you let them think she was dead." If only they had let Arausio know the truth, then he would never have come to me; and I would never have pursued the matter, never have heard of Rindel, never have confronted Zeno with the ring. Their own secrecy had finally been their undoing. "But you couldn't possibly keep up such a pretense forever. You must have realized that."
"In a city under siege, you learn to live from day to day. Even so, time was on our side. Once Caesar takes the city, everything will change. Who knows how things will fall out? One thing is certain: Apollonides will no longer be First Timouchos. He may even lose his head. Whatever happens, Massilia will never be independent again. This is the best we can hope for: that Caesar will disband the Timouchoi and put a Roman general in charge of the city. But he'll need an insider who knows the city, someone loyal to him who can run the bureaucracy, quell sedition-"
"A Massilian lackey. And that would be you?" Just as he had married for position, so, too, was Zeno ready to call Caesar his master.
"Why not? I argued from the beginning that we should open our gates to Caesar, that we never should have resisted him." I nodded thoughtfully. "My son Meto-how and when did you come to know him?"
He smiled. "I met Meto when he first came to Massilia, just before the siege began. He was passing himself off as a defector from Caesar's inner circle. Right away he must have realized that I was sympathetic to Caesar. I made no secret of it; I objected loudly when the Timouchoi voted to side with Pompey. I was rather scornful of Meto, as a matter of fact. I thought he must be even stupider than my father-in-law. Here was a young Roman 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.