Steven Saylor - Last seen in Massilia

"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.