Last Seen in Massilia

XIV

I dreamed that night of Meto's toga day, when he turned sixteen and for the first time put on his manly toga for a promenade through the Forum in Rome. The night before he had panicked and been paralyzed with doubt; how could a boy born a slave ever truly become a Roman? But I had comforted him, and on the appointed morning my heart soared with pride to see him stride through the Forum, a citizen among citizens.

In my dream, all was exactly as it had been on that day, except that I never saw Meto's face; in a strange way I didn't see him at all, for where he should have been there was a kind of gap in my vision, a nothingness, an empty blur. Yet the dream-Forum through which our little retinue progressed was somehow even more vivid than life, super-real, teeming with color and noise. We passed by the great temples and across the public spaces. We mounted the long flight of steps that led to the summit of the Capitoline Hill, and on the way up, who should pass us coming down but a group of senators, including none other than Caesar. Ever the politician, always eager to ingratiate himself with potential supporters, Caesar congratulated Meto on his toga day, even though he scarcely looked at him. Was that the first time Meto and Caesar met face to face? It must have been. Who could have imagined then how closely their destinies would intertwine?

In my dream, Caesar was especially vivid. His face was almost a caricature of itself, the high cheekbones and lofty forehead slightly exaggerated, the bright eyes sparkling feverishly, the thin lips drawn into a characteristic smile, as if at some secret joke shared only by Caesar and the gods.

The senators moved on. Our retinue proceeded upward. Atop the Capitoline my old friend Rufus observed the auspices, searching the sky for birds in order to read the will of the gods. We waited a long time for any bird at all to appear. Finally a great winged shape darted like lightning across the sky and landed at our feet. The eagle stared at us and we stared back. I had never seen one so close. I could have reached out and touched it, had I dared. Suddenly, with a great beating of wings, it departed. What did it mean? The eagle was Jupiter's favorite, the most divine of birds. According to Rufus, to have seen one on Meto's toga day, especially so close, was the best of all possible omens. But even then I felt vaguely apprehensive; and later, when Meto first saw the eagle standard of Catilina, it had seemed to him a further sign of the gods' will, a marker for his destiny, and I think it must have been in that very instant that he truly became a man, which is to say that he moved irrevocably beyond my control and into dangers from which I could no longer protect him.

I was suddenly transported, as happens in dreams, to a place completely different. I was in the treasure chamber beneath the house of Gaius Verres, amid the clutter of shimmering coins and jewel-encrusted artifacts. It seemed to me that Meto was in the room as well, but invisible. The eagle standard loomed over us, uncannily lifelike-and then, suddenly, the eagle was alive! It let out a shriek and flapped its wings, trying to take flight in the confined space, thrashing madly, rending the air with its beak and its dagger-sharp talons. I covered my eyes. The dream became a nightmare of screams, blood, confusion.

And then I awoke.

Davus was gently shaking me. "Father-in-law, wake up! Something important is happening."

"What?" I shook my head, confused and uncertain where I was.

"A ship arrived during the night-"

"A ship?"

"It slipped past the Roman blockade. An advance messenger. Reinforcements are coming-ships full of soldiers-sent by Pompey!"

The nightmare clung to me like cobwebs. I sat up, reached blindly for the ewer beside the bed, and splashed water onto my face. The room was shadowy but not completely dark, illuminated by the faint glow that precedes the dawn. For a fleeting instant it seemed to me, beyond any doubt, that Meto was in the room. I looked about and, not seeing him, felt certain nonetheless that he must be there, present but somehow invisible. Davus saw me staring into space and wrinkled his brow. "Father-in-law, are you ill?"

I took a long time to answer. "No, Davus. Not ill. Just sick at heart…"

This seemed to reassure him. "Then you'd better get up. The whole town is awake, even though it's not yet daylight. People are out in the streets, on rooftops, hanging out windows, calling back and forth to each other. I can't follow the Greek, but Hieronymus says-"

"Hieronymus says, let their timbers rot and Poseidon take them!" Our host stood in the doorway, a dour look on his face. I cleared my throat. "Is it true, what Davus says? A ship arrived in the night?"

"A fast-sailing messenger ship. Apparently it slipped past the blockade and into the harbor without being seen by the Romans. Amazing how quickly the news spread across the city, like wildfire jumping from rooftop to rooftop."

"And more ships are on the way?"

"So goes the rumor. One of Pompey's admirals has reached a Massilian garrison called Taurois just a few miles up the coast. They say he has eighteen galleys-an even match for Caesar's fleet." He sighed glumly. "Come, Gordianus. Get dressed and take breakfast with me."

I rubbed my eyes and wondered which was more precarious, the dream world I had just left or the one I had awakened to. Would there ever again come a time when I could wake in the morning and know, with blessed, boring predictability, exactly what each hour of the day would bring?

We breakfasted on the rooftop terrace. The privileged venue, with its lofty seclusion looking out on distant views, gave a sense of removal, but the palpable excitement in the city penetrated even there. From the street below came snatches of conversation as passersby speculated on the size and quality of the expected reinforcements, predicted the annihilation of the blockading navy, gloated over the terrible revenge to be exacted against Caesar's forces. A trumpeter blew his horn in the street; a crier announced that all slaves were confined to their households and that all able-bodied citizens were to report at once to the dockyards, by order of the Timouchoi. From nearby temples came chants of praise to the strange xoanon Artemis of the Massilians and her brother Ares. Out at the wall along the sea, a steady stream of women, children, and old men funneled into the bastion towers, wound their way up the stairwells, and poured out along the battlements.

"Was this how it was on the day the Massilian navy sailed out to take on Caesar's ships?" I asked Hieronymus.

He followed my gaze to the wall. "Exactly. All the noncombatants gathered on the wall to watch. Standing like statues and peering at the sea, or huddled in little groups, or pacing nervously about. All torn between hope and the terrible fear that everything might go wrong-as it did, last time." A faint, sardonic smile bent his lips. "Do you see how some have brought blankets and parasols and even small folding chairs? They've come prepared to stay all day. Last time those same spectators brought baskets of food as well. Watching men kill each other is hungry work. But I don't see anyone carrying a basket today. Not enough rations, I suppose. Would you care for another piece of bread, Gordianus? Perhaps a stuffed date?"

The slanting light of the rising sun glinted across the face of the Sacrifice Rock. Although it looked as if its summit would afford the best possible view of the harbor and the waters beyond, the spectators shunned it and kept to the man-made battlements.

"Do you know, Davus," I said, "I have a sudden impulse to see the Sacrifice Rock."

"We can see it from here."

"Yes, we can. But I want to have a closer look."

Davus frowned. "Apollonides told us that the rock is off limits. It's sacred ground, forbidden, for as long as the scapegoat is still-" He realized what he had said and averted his eyes from Hieronymus.

I nodded. "And we have obediently kept our distance. Until now. On any other day, snooping around the wall and the Sacrifice Rock, we'd have instantly drawn attention to ourselves. We'd have been ordered to keep away, maybe even arrested. But today, with the authorities distracted and so many people out, perhaps we can take advantage of the crowd and its confusion." I put another stuffed date in my mouth and savored it. "Eat your fill, Davus. We may not be able to eat again for a while; it would hardly be seemly to carry food into a hungry crowd forced to do without."

Out in the streets, no one seemed to take any notice of me, but Davus attracted curious looks. Slaves had been confined to quarters and every able-bodied citizen had been summoned to the dockyards. Other than a handful of soldiers stationed here and there to keep order, there was not a young man to be seen among the women, children, and graybeards heading for the battlements. With his broad shoulders and tall frame, Davus stood out.

But no one prevented us from merging with the others who were filing into the nearest bastion tower to mount the stairwell that led up to the battlements. This was the tower into which the soldier in the light blue cape had vanished after the woman plunged from the precipice. These were the steps by which he had fled from his crime, if indeed there had been a crime for him to flee. We were retracing his route in reverse. Every step took us closer to the Sacrifice Rock.

Halfway up, I paused to catch my breath. Davus waited beside me while others passed by. "Any sign of those shadows that followed us yesterday?" I asked, peering down the hollow center of the stairwell.

"Not that I've seen," said Davus. "The two men I saw yesterday would stand out in this crowd almost as much as I do." We pressed on and soon emerged from the bastion onto the platform that ran along the battlements. To our right, toward the sea, the crowd was pressed thickly all along the outer wall, where people jostled one another to get the best view. I turned and looked in the opposite direction, toward the spine of hills and jumbled rooftops of the city. I searched for the scapegoat's house in vain until Davus pointed it out to me; then I clearly saw the green-clad figure of Hieronymus sitting on his rooftop terrace with tall trees on either side. If he saw us, he gave no sign. Beyond the skyline of the city, I could see the summit of the high hill upon which Trebonius had established his camp and from which the commander was no doubt at that very moment keeping watch on the city and the sea beyond.

Turning back toward the sea, I could see only glimpses of blue through the crowd. Davus, able to peer over the throng, told me he could see from the harbor mouth to the islands offshore and beyond. Away from the wall, the crowd was thin enough for us to thread our way toward the Sacrifice Rock, which loomed up as we approached. The weathered finger of limestone was white with patches of gray and streaks of black running down its smooth hollows and sinuous contours. It rose higher than the wall and extended farther outward, overhanging the sea far below like the jutting prow of a ship. As we approached the rock, the crowd grew thinner, and the section of the wall nearest the rock was completely empty. No doubt the Massilians hung back out of superstitious awe and respect for the rock's sanctity, but there was also a more practical reason; beyond a certain point, the jutting rock obscured the view of the islands outside the harbor and completely blocked the view of the harbor mouth.

Where the wall abutted the rock, the building stones had been expertly cut to fit without a gap, and the looming rock bulged out over the battlements, forming a sort of shallow cave. We had seen the man in the blue cape jump from the rock onto the wall. I found the approximate spot where he must have landed and looked up at the overhanging lip of rock. From rock to wall was a jump of at least ten feet, perhaps more. The man had stumbled when he landed, I recalled, and had limped as he tan toward the bastion tower, favoring his left leg.

It appeared, at first, that we had reached a dead end; short of scaling the overhang, there was no way to get onto the rock and over it and then to the next stretch of wall. But this was not

quite the case. At the left-hand corner where the wall abutted the rock on the city side, the overhang slanted sharply down and receded considerably. Shallow steps, some scarcely more than toeholds, had been crudely chiseled out of the stone. It would require a considerable step, angling out over a sheer drop, to reach the first toehold, and the ones that followed were erratically spaced and appeared to follow a circuitous path, having been cut more in accordance with the peculiar contours of the rock than to match the measure of a man's footsteps. To climb onto or off of the rock using these toeholds would require a considerable amount of agility and strength, not to mention nerve and patience, which was probably why the man in the blue cape had bypassed them to take the shortcut of simply jumping down onto the wall.

Davus looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "Shall I go first, father-in-law? I'll have an easier time stepping up to that first notch. Then I can reach back to give you a hand if you need help."

"If I need help? You're very tactful, Davus. Even at your age, I'd have hesitated to take that first step. Hurry, then, while no one's watching."

I glanced at the crowd over my shoulder, then watched with bated breath while Davus reached up to grasp the stone face with both hands, raised his left foot to gain the toehold, and swung his body up and briefly out over a corner of empty space between the rock and the wall. He paused, testing his balance and calculating his next move, then swung up and back, again over empty space, and raised his right foot to the next toehold. The maneuver brought his center of gravity squarely back over the rock, and I heard him release a sigh of relief an instant before I did.

"Now you," he said. He extended his hand. Had his arm been any shorter, I couldn't have reached it.

His grip was strong. With my other hand I clutched at the rock face and raised my left foot as high as I could. The toehold was just out of reach-until Davus gave me a steady pull and lifted me high enough for my toes to slip over the notch. I propelled myself upward and swung out over empty space, feeling suddenly queasy and out of control.

"Steady," Davus whispered. "Keep your eyes on the rock and don't look down. Do you see the next step?"

"Yes."

"It's not as far as it looks."

"Somehow, I don't find that particularly reassuring."

Davus's grip remained firm. I raised my right foot, searched clumsily for the toehold, then found it. I took another swing over empty space, and for a vertiginous instant I knew beyond any doubt that if Davus were not gripping my hand I would have lost my balance and fallen. I glanced down. It was a sheer drop for most of the way. Eventually a falling body would hit either the wall or the rock and then bounce back and forth between them. I shut my eyes and swallowed hard.

A moment later, I was securely on the Sacrifice Rock, my balance regained. Another easy step upward and I was on the overhanging lip of the rock, on a relatively level surface. Davus released my hand and proceeded on all fours ahead of me. I scrambled after him.

The view from the Sacrifice Rock was uninterrupted in all directions, but the summit was slightly depressed at the middle, like a furrowed tongue, so that if we crouched, we couldn't be seen by the spectators lining the battlements on either side. We remained visible to anyone who might be gazing out from one of the houses behind us. When I turned to have a look at the scapegoat's rooftop, I saw that Hieronymus had risen to his feet and stood at the edge of his terrace, leaning forward with his hands on the balustrade, watching intently.

Peering over the farther edge of the rock, I looked down upon the section of wall that lay beyond. The crowd was even thicker along this stretch of the battlements; but as on the opposite side, even though here the rock presented no visual barrier, people

kept their distance from it. I looked for a way to get down to the wall, but if anything, this side offered even less access than the way we had come; there did not seem to be even crude toeholds for gaining access.

Staying low, I turned toward the sea and crept forward to have a look over the precipice. The rock formed a shelf extending well beyond the line of the wall and then abruptly ended. I lay flat on the rock and poked my head over the edge. Far below, I saw shallow, jagged rocks washed by churning waves that glinted blue-green and gold in the soft morning light.

Davus crept up alongside me and peered over the edge. "What do you think, Davus? Could anyone survive a drop like that?"

"Impossible! Of course, if it weren't for the rocks…"

I looked past him, toward the stretch of wall from which Meto had jumped. There the wall dropped sheer to the sea, with no rocks at the base. If it weren't for the rocks… what then? A man might strike the water and survive? There was no point in pursuing such thoughts, yet I found myself staring at the blue-green depths as if they held a secret that might be yielded up if only I stared long and hard enough.

Davus suddenly nudged me and pointed. "Father-in-law, look!" A Massilian galley appeared at the harbor mouth, rowing out toward the open sea. Its deck was crowded with archers and ballistic artillery. Another ship followed it, and another, all with oars flashing in the sunlight. From the top of each mast, a pale blue pennant snapped in the breeze.

As each ship came into view, cheers erupted from the spectators, beginning at the section of the wall nearest the harbor mouth and then spreading toward us, so that successive waves of cheering poured over us. Spectators waved blankets, twirled parasols, or produced bits of cloth and waved them in the air. From the decks of the outbound ships, the walls of Massilia must have presented a lively spectacle of color and motion.

"I thought the Massilian navy had been destroyed," said Davus.

"Not destroyed, only crippled. Rendered too weak to present a challenge to Caesar's ships lying offshore. No doubt the shipbuilders have been hard at work repairing the galleys that survived the battle and refitting old ships-look, there's a vessel hardly bigger than a fishing boat, but they've installed screens to protect the rowers and mounted a catapult on it."

More ships appeared, all flying pale blue pennants. The first to exit the harbor drew up its oars and set sail, swinging round to port to catch a rising wind that propelled it into the channel between the mainland and the islands offshore. The other ships followed the same course, steering adroitly along the coastline and disappearing from sight behind the low hills on the far side of the harbor.

"Where are they off to?" asked Davus.

"Hieronymus said the relief force is anchored a few miles up the coast, at a place called Taurois. The Massilian ships must mean to join them so that they can take on Caesar's fleet together."

"Speaking of which…" Davus pointed toward the islands offshore. Sailing out from the hidden harbor on the far side, a galley appeared, followed by others. Caesar's fleet was setting sail in pursuit of the Massilians. Why had they waited so long? According to Hieronymus, Pompey's messenger ship had arrived without alerting the blockade. It seemed that the sudden reappearance of a revamped Massilian navy had taken Caesar's fleet by surprise. Now they were scrambling to react.

The last of the Massilian ships cleared the harbor and headed up the coast before the first of Caesar's galleys managed to maneuver past the islands and set sail after them. It was obvious that the Massilian galleys were faster and more skillfully manned. "If it were nothing more than a race, the Massilians would win without a contest," Davus observed.

"They may have better ships and better sailors," I granted, "but what will happen when they turn about and fight?"

A third voice answered: "If only we Massilians had a Cassandra, like the Trojans, to answer such questions!"

Davus and I both gave a start and looked up. Looming over us, his hands on his hips, his face starkly lit by the morning sun, stood Hieronymus.