Last seen in Massilia rsr-8 Page 17

  "Leading these Romans who jumped on board were two twins. I saw them that close, close enough to see that they were absolutely identical. It was unnerving, like a vision, like some prodigy sent by the gods to confound us. Confusion kills a man faster than anything else in battle. One instant of uncertainty-a blink, a glance from face to face, another blink-and you're dead! They were young, these two, young and handsome, both grinning and yelling and cutting the air with their swords.

  "But one of them was careless. He stepped too far ahead of his companions, exposed himself to an attack from the side. One of my men surprised him with a chopping blow-sliced the Roman's right hand clean off, the hand that was clutching his sword. The Roman never stop grinning! No, that's not exactly true; his grin turned into something else, but it was still a kind of grin, ghastly, frozen on his face. Blood spurted from his severed wrist. He stared at it, dumbfounded, but still with that mad grin. You'd think that would have been the end of him, but he didn't even stagger. Do you know what he did? He bent over, reached down with his left hand, and picked up the sword that was still in the grip of his severed right hand. It's unbelievable, I know, but I saw it! He managed to get hold of the sword, and then he stood up and continued to fight. He was shielding his brother, protecting him, being completely careless of his own safety. He must have known that it was over for him; he'd never survive the loss of so much blood. He swung both arms recklessly-swung his sword, swung the severed wrist from which blood spurted in great jets.

  "My men fell back, horrified, sickened by the spray of blood. I managed to rally them and together we rushed him. The Roman raised his left arm high in the air. His sword was poised to come down on my skull. I thought in that instant I would surely die-but he never managed to bring down his sword. One of my men came up from the side and delivered a two-handed blow that lopped off the Roman's left arm at the elbow. The blood! The sight of him-!"

  For a long moment Zeno paused. Everyone in earshot had fallen silent to listen. Cydimache moved closer to him but did not touch him. Zeno shuddered and gasped, then drew a deep breath and went on.

  "His severed left wrist was still gushing blood. His severed right elbow was pouring out gore. Horrible! And still he didn't fall. He stood upright and screamed a single word through his clenched teeth. Do you know what it was? `Caesar!' Not the name of his mother. Not the name of his twin. Not the name of a god, but `Caesar!' His brother joined him, and then the other Romans, until they were all screaming the name of Caesar as if it were a curse upon us.

  "We had them now, you see. Our ship had managed to pull clear from the Roman galley. The Romans on board were stranded. My men had rallied. We greatly outnumbered them. The Romans had no hope. But still the wounded Roman-armless, handless-still he protected his brother. He screamed the name of Caesar and threw himself against us, thrashing this way and that, using his mutilated body itself as a weapon. It was uncanny, monstrous, like something from a nightmare.

  "For a moment… for a moment I panicked. I thought: This is end of us. This is all it will take. These ten Romans, if they're all like this one, these ten alone will be able to kill us all and seize control of the ship. They're not men, they're demons!

  "But they were only men, of course, and they died like men. They might have leaped into the sea to save themselves, tried to swim back to their ship or to some other Roman vessel, but instead they stood their ground and fought. The mutilated Roman finally fell. We stabbed him all over. The wounds hardly bled, he had lost so much blood already. His face was as white as a cloud. He was still grinning that horrible grin when his eyes rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the deck.

  "His twin cried `Caesar!' and threw himself against us, weeping. He was mad with grief, careless. I stabbed him in the belly, then the throat. I was shocked at how easily he died. The rest of the Romans… were harder to kill. They took two Massilians for every Roman. Even after they were all dead, and we had thrown their bodies into the sea, they kept on killing us. Their blood itself killed us! The deck was so slippery with the stuff that one of my men-the one who'd landed the first blow that severed the Roman's wrist-fell and broke his neck. He died instantly, flat on his back, his neck twisted, his eyes wide open, staring at the heavens."

  Complete silence had fallen over the garden. The guests in the farthest corners had ceased conversing, and the slaves bearing trays beneath the colonnade had stopped to listen. Even the Artemis who stood in the dry fountain seemed to pause and listen, her bow frozen in her hands and her head tilted slightly to one side.

  Cydimache moved closer to her husband. Zeno, his head bowed, reached out and laid his hand gently on her cloaked arm, as if she were the one who needed comforting.

  Apollonides sat motionless, aware of the sudden, utter silence and of the spell that Zeno's words had cast over everyone. "A bad day for Massilia," he finally said, his voice almost a whisper.

  Zeno let out a bitter laugh. "A bad day, father-in-law? Is that all you can say? It's nothing compared to the days to come!"

  "Lower your voice, Zeno."

  "Why, First Timouchos? Do you imagine there are spies among us?"

  "Zeno!"

  "The fact is, this is all your fault, you and the others who voted to side with Pompey against Caesar. I warned you! I told you-"

  "Quiet, Zeno! That question was argued at the proper place and time. A decision was made-"

  "By a group of half-witted old misers who couldn't see the future when it slapped them in the face. We should never have closed our gates to Caesar! When he came to us, seeking our help and promising his protection, we should have opened them wide and welcomed him in."

  "No! Massilia has always been loyal to Rome. Nothing has changed that and nothing ever will. Pompey and the Senate are Rome, not Caesar. Caesar is a usurper, a traitor, a-"

  "Caesar is the future, father-in-law! When you spurned him, that's what you turned your back on. Now Massilia has no future, thanks to you."

  Cydimache laid her hand upon Zeno's arm, either to comfort him or restrain him, or both.

  At this gesture of wifely devotion, Apollonides bridled. "Daughter! How can you sit there and listen to this man when he speaks to your father in such a way?"

  Cydimache made no answer. I peered at her cloaked figure in the dim light. It seemed to me that she was like an oracle that would not speak-obscure, mysterious, in this world but not entirely of it. I could see nothing at all of her deformed face or body, yet her posture spoke undeniably of torn loyalties and heartbreaking grief-or did I only imagine this, misreading the silhouette of a veiled hunchback?

  Zeno extricated himself from her touch-not brusquely, but tenderly-and stood. "All I know, father-in-law, is that while I was out there today, watching our ships go up in flames or crack apart and vanish in the waves, I didn't hear men yelling your name, or Pompey's name, or `For the Timouchoi!' I heard men crying `Caesar!' They screamed his name as they killed, and they screamed it as they died. And the men crying `Caesar!' were the men who won the battle. I expect they shall be crying `Caesar!' when they bring down the walls of Massilia. `Caesar!' will be the name we hear as they cut our throats, and `Caesar!' will be in the ears of our wives and daughters when they're stripped and taped and carried off to be slaves."

  This was too much for many of the listeners. There were gasps, grunts, cries of "Shame!" and "Hubris!"

  Even in the dim light, I could see that Apollonides trembled with fury. "Go!" he whispered hoarsely.

  "Why not?" said Zeno. "I've lost my appetite, even for this pathetic fare. Come, wife."

  Apollonides turned his gaze to Cydimache, who seemed to hesitate. At last she rose laboriously to her feet and stood, hunched over, beside her husband. With excruciating slowness, the two of them left the garden, Cydimache shambling along, Zeno limping slightly and holding her arm. Apollonides kept his gaze straight ahead.

  In the wake of Zeno's exit, the party became strangely animated. The buzz of low conversation came from every corner
. People felt obliged to share their outrage at Zeno, or their agreement with him; or perhaps they felt obliged to babble simply to fill the awkward silence.

  "Stay here," I whispered to Davus.

  As I stepped past Milo, he pointed over his shoulder and muttered, "You'll find them that way," thinking I was searching for the privies. "Primitive, compared to Roman plumbing," he added.

  I took a roundabout way, so that it would not be too obvious that I was following Zeno. There was enough movement among the guests and the serving slaves that I attracted no attention.

  They had disappeared through a doorway that opened off one of the colonnades. The doorway led to a long, wide hallway. I walked quickly, glancing into the rooms on either side, seeing no one until I came to the far end of the passage, which opened onto yet another courtyard, this one much smaller and more intimate than the one where the dinner was being held. The courtyard was dark and deserted; or so I thought, until I heard hushed voices. They came from the shadows beneath the opposite colonnade.

  I held my breath and listened, but the voices were too low for me to make sense of them. They might have been arguing, and one of them was almost certainly a man's voice; beyond that I could only speculate. At last I cleared my throat and spoke. "Zeno?"

  There was a long pause. Then I heard the voice of Zeno: "Who is it?"

  I stepped from the shadows of the colonnade and into the faint starlight of the open courtyard. "My name is Gordianus," I said.

  A longer pause. Then: "Do I know you?"

  "No. I'm a Roman. A guest of your father-in-law." This was not entirely untrue.

  "What do you want?" He emerged from beneath the opposite colonnade and took a few steps toward me. His cape obscured his silhouette, but I thought I saw his right hand move to his waist, as if to reach for a dagger in a scabbard. He took another step toward me.

  For a brief moment I was struck by the irony, should my lifeless body be found in this place. How many times had I been called upon to make sense of a corpse discovered in a courtyard, to ferret for clues to the killer's identity, to make sense of the crime? What a jest of the gods if Gordianus the Finder should meet his end as just such a victim as those he had spent his life puzzling over! A slave would find my body, an alarm would be raised, and the First Timouchos's dinner party disrupted. The stab wounds would be noted and the identity of the victim a mystery until someone-Domitius, Milo, Davus, Apollonides himself? — identified me. But from that point it seemed unlikely that anyone would spare much time or effort trying to solve my murder, except perhaps poor Davus.

  Unless…

  For the briefest of instants, perhaps no longer than the blink of an eye, I entertained a most peculiar fantasy: Meto was still alive and in Massilia, and this was his story, not mine. I was the one destined to die, not he; and he was the one destined to grieve for me and search for my killer. I was merely the victim in someone else's story, mistakenly thinking myself to be the protagonist! This fantasy was so powerful that I was wrenched out of the moment, abruptly disengaged from reality, cast into the world where sleepwalkers dwell. It was a foreshadowing of death, such as all men must occasionally feel, especially as they grow older. What is it to be a lemur, after all, but to be written out of the world's story, to become a name spoken in the past tense, to mutely watch from the shadows while others carry on the tale of the living?

  I shivered. Perhaps I lurched a bit, for Zeno stepped forward again and said, "Are you unwell?"

  "Quite well," I managed to say. "But I couldn't help but notice that you walk with a slight limp."

  He stiffened. From guilt, or merely in response to a stranger's rudeness? "A battle wound," he finally answered.

  "From today's battle? Or have you had that limp for several days?"

  He had drawn so close that even by starlight I could see the frown on his handsome face. "Who are you to ask me such a question?"

  "In Rome they call me the Finder. Even here, some of your fellow citizens have heard of me. One of them came to me the other day, a man named Arausio. He was grieving for his daughter. Her name was Rindel."

  Beyond Zeno, a figure moved from behind one of the concealing columns. The deep shadows of the colonnade still obscured her, but the misshapen silhouette of Cydimache was unmistakable.

  "What do you want?" asked Zeno sharply, whispering. "Why are you telling me this?"

  I lowered my voice to match his. "Does the name Arausio mean nothing to you? Or the name Rindel?"

  Again he reached toward his dagger. I felt a tremor of fear, but his agitation emboldened me. "Listen to me, Zeno. Arausio thinks he knows what became of his daughter, but he can't be sure-"

  "What concern is this of yours, Roman?"

  "When a father loses a child, he needs to know the truth. The pain of not knowing gnaws at a man, robs his sleep, poisons every breath. Believe me, I know! Arausio believes that only you can tell him the truth of what happened to his daughter." I glanced at the figure of Cydimache, which remained in the shadows. "If you have nothing to hide, then why have we lowered our voices to keep your wife from hearing?"

  "My wife-" Zeno seemed to choke on the word. "My wife has nothing to answer for. If you dare even to speak her name, I swear by Artemis that I'll kill you where you stand!"

  He had killed men already that day. I couldn't doubt that he would kill one more. Did I dare to push him any harder? If he saw me reach into the little pouch at my waist, he might misinterpret the movement and draw his dagger; so I moved very slowly and said very softly, "I have something I want to show you, Zeno. It's in this pouch. Here, I'm pulling it out now. Can you see it between my fingers?"

  I found myself wishing that the light was stronger, the better for him to see the ring and for me to study his face. Did he recognize the ring or not?

  Darkness obscured his face, but I heard him make a strange choking noise between a swallow and a gasp. He drew back. Alarm, or the lameness of his right leg, caused him to stumble. Cydimache lurched forward out of the deep shadows, clutching her robes to her breast; for all she knew, I had struck him a blow.

  Zeno looked over his shoulder. "Stay back!" he cried, with a sob in his voice. He turned back to me and drew his dagger. The blade gleamed in the starlight.

  His ears were sharper than mine. He suddenly stiffened and lowered his arm. Keeping his eyes on something behind me, he stepped back into the shadows of the colonnade. He slipped an arm around Cydimache, brought his face close to hers, whispered. The two of them withdrew into deeper darkness. "Father-in-law, here you are!"

  I gave a start as Davus stepped up beside me. My heart pounded in my chest. I wasn't sure whether to thank him or curse him. Had he spoiled the moment when Zeno might have weakened, or had he saved my life?

  I let out a long sigh and stared at the darkness into which Zeno and Cydimache had vanished.

  XVIII

  "After tonight, three things are clear," I said, raising a finger to tick the points off one by one. Had there been space in the tiny room I would have paced. Instead, I sat on my narrow bed with my back against the wall, idly tapping the floor with one foot. Davus sat across from me, knocking his cramped knees together.

  "First, Zeno recognized this ring." I rolled it between my fingers, studying the strange stone by the feeble lamplight. "His reaction was powerful and immediate."

  "Then the ring did come from Rindel, and somehow got left on the Sacrifice Rock when Zeno pushed her off," said Davus. I shook my head. "That doesn't necessarily follow. We don't know for certain that this ring belonged to Rindel; we still don't know for certain that it was Rindel, or even Zeno, we saw on the rock that day; and we don't know, despite your certainty, that the woman we saw was pushed."

  "But it must have been Zeno! We saw him limping tonight."

  "His limp could have another explanation. He told me it was from a battle wound."

  Davus snorted. "I'll wager he had that limp long before he sailed off to battle this morning. That should be simple e
nough to find out. His fellow officers would know how long he's been limping. Apollonides would know."

  "That's easily resolved, then; I'll just interrogate the First Timouchos at my convenience, shall I? But you're right that his lameness isn't something Zeno could hide from his comrades. It would be instructive to know just how long he's exhibited that limp."

  I raised another finger and ticked it off: "The second thing we now know for sure is that Zeno truly loves Cydimache. Despite what Domitius told me about her ugliness and deformity, despite Arausio's presumption that Zeno abandoned Rindel and married the First Timouchos's daughter merely to better himself, the two newlyweds share a genuine affection for each other. Did you see them tonight? The way she drew closer to him, to calm him; the way he touched her, casually, almost without thought, yet tenderly. That wasn't an act. I saw a man and woman physically at ease with each other, united by a bond of trust."

  Davus snorted. "You could say the same thing about a man and a horse."

  "Cydimache is a woman, Davus."

  "A woman, a horse-if Zeno is as calculating and ambitious as Arausio thinks, which woman he marries may matter to him no more, and no less, than which beast he takes for transport. All he's looking for is a reliable means to get where he's going, and marrying Cydimache took him straight to the top. But now that he's arrived, he's stuck with her, and he'll have to get her with child if he's to become a Timouchos. So he's forced himself to do the act with her, and for that she's grateful. Why shouldn't she coo and comfort him? And in the process, he's gotten used to her. A man can get used to just about anything in this world-any man who's ever been a slave can tell you that. So Zeno is able to touch her without shuddering-what of it? Especially the way she keeps herself covered; probably she stays bundled like that when he makes love to her, and Zeno just shuts his eyes and thinks of pretty Rindel."

  "What! Pictures the girl whom, according to you, he cold-bloodedly pushed off the Sacrifice Rock?"