They appeared to have mistaken me for someone else. I was about to say as much when Publicius spoke up. The emotion in his voice overwhelmed his dignified bearing and caused him to stammer. "Are you-I mean, are you really-are you the Gordianus?"

"I suppose. The name is fairly uncommon," I allowed.

His shorter companion elbowed him. "Of course it's him! There can be only one Gordianus the Finder."

"Perhaps not," I said. "Some philosophers teach that each man is unique, but others believe that we each have a double." Publicius laughed out loud. "And a wit! Of course, you would be. So famously clever and all that." He shook his head., beaming at me. "I can hardly believe it. I'm actually seeing you in the flesh!" His eyes sparkled, as if he were Jason and I the fleece. I found his scrutiny disconcerting.

Minucius saw my discomfort. "You're wary, Finder-and rightly so, in this godforsaken city." He lowered his voice. "Spies everywhere. And pretenders."

"Pretenders?"

"Frauds. Impostors. Liars and rogues. Misleaders of the credulous."

"You make Massilia sound like Rome."

I was serious, but they again took my words for wit and cackled. Whom on earth had they mistaken me for? A popular comedian from the stage? Some wandering philosopher with a cultish following?

"I think, citizens, that you may have confused me with another Gordianus."

"Surely not," said Publicius. "Are you not the father of Meto, Caesar's close companion?"

I drew a sharp breath. "I am."

"The same Gordianus who fought alongside his son Meto, then barely old enough to don a manly toga, under the banner of the great Lucius Sergius Catilina-"

"Catilina the Deliverer!" intoned Minucius in a sudden rapture, with folded hands and upturned eyes.

"-at the battle of Pistoria?"

"Yes," I said quietly. "I was at Pistoria… with Meto. And Catilina. That was years ago."

"Thirteen years ago, last Januarius," noted Minucius. "Thirteen is a mystical number!"

"You and your son were the only followers of Catilina to survive that battle," continued Publicius. "All the others perished alongside the great Deliverer. Nothing in this universe occurs without a reason. We are all part of a divine plan. The gods chose you, Gordianus, and your son, to carry the memory of Catalina’s last moments."

"Did they? All I remember is a great deal of noise and confusion, and screaming, and blood everywhere." And fear, I thought. I had never known such fear as when the Roman troops assembled against Catilina began to converge upon us there on that battlefield in northern Italy. I was there, suited in mismatched armor with a sword in my hand, for only one reason: because my son, with the hot-headed enthusiasm of a sixteen-year-old, had decided to cast his lot with the doomed leader of a doomed revolution, and if I could not persuade him to abandon Catilina, I had determined to die fighting at his side. But in the end it was Meto who saved me, who abandoned the battlefield to drag me, unconscious, to a safe refuge where we two alone, of all those who fought alongside Catilina, survived. The next day, in the victors' camp, I saw the head of Catilina mounted on a stake. He had been a man of immense charm and wit, radiating an infectious sensuality; nothing could have brought home more vividly the totality of his destruction than the sight of that lifeless head with its gaping mouth and empty eyes. It haunted my nightmares still. So much for the revolution Catilina had promised his followers; so much for the leader these men still, inexplicably, insisted on calling "the Deliverer."

"Pistoria!" said Publicius, who intoned the name of the battleground as if it were a holy shrine. "You were actually there, beside the Deliverer himself! Did you hear his last words?"

"I heard the speech he delivered to his troops.," Wry and ironical it had been, fearless and without illusion. Catilina had faced destruction with his eyes wide open, perversely defiant to the end.

"And you saw his final moments?"

I sighed. "Meto and I were near Catilina when the fighting began. He planted his eagle standard in the ground. That was the spot where he made his last stand. I saw the standard fall…"

"The eagle standard!" gasped Publicius. "The eagle standard of Marius himself, which Catilina held in trust for the next deliverer to come."

Publicius and Minucius raised their hands and chanted together: "The eagle standard! The eagle standard!"

"Yes, well… I felt increasingly uncomfortable in the presence of these two fawning acolytes of a dead deliverer. "If you were such staunch supporters of Catilina, why were you not there at Pistoria as well?"

As they had chanted, so they blushed in unison. Publicius cleared his throat. "We and a few others came here to Massilia in advance of Catilina, to clear the way for his arrival. Up until very near the end, it was in his mind to escape to Massilia, here to plan his triumphant return to Rome. But in the end, alas, he could not abandon the country and the people he sought to deliver from the Senate's tyranny. Catilina chose martyrdom over exile. He made his stand at Pistoria and fell there. It was left to us, the handful of his followers who had fled to Massilia, to keep his memory alive."

"To keep his dream alive!" added Minucius.

"And now the gods have led you here, Gordianus the Finder. Have led both you and your son to Massilia! It can only be a sign that the faith we have kept alive all these years has been justified, that the gods have looked down upon us and given us their blessing."

"My son-how did you know he was here?"

"Because he came to us, of course. He sought us out in secret. When he revealed to us who he was-"

"No one less than Meto, who fought with Catilina at Pistoria, who crossed the Rubicon with Caesar-"

"We could hardly believe it. It was a sign, of course. A sign of the gods' favor-"

"Favor?" I snapped. "You fools! My son is dead."

There was an awkward silence. My two visitors gazed sidelong at each other, keeping their mouths shut but working their eyebrows and lips, as if debating some point purely by an exchange of facial expressions. Finally Publicius stepped forward. He took my hand, which hung limply at my side.

"Come with us, Gordianus. We have something to show you. And something to tell you."

"Tell me now, then."

He shook his head gravely. "No, not here." He looked askance

at Hieronymus and lowered his voice. "This place is… not suitable." Impure, he meant. Unclean, on account of the scapegoat. "Come, Gordianus. You must see what we have to show you. You must hear what we have to say."

I swallowed hard. The visit from the Gaulish merchant had distracted me, had lured me with a puzzle to take me out of myself and away from my misery. The visit from these latterday Catilinarians had plunged me back into an unhappy past and an even more miserable present. What of any consequence could they show me? What could they tell me that I didn't already know? I looked to Davus, who saw my indecision and gave an eloquent shrug, as if to say, Why not? What have we to lose, father-in-law, stuck here on the edge of nowhere?

"Very well," I said. "Davus and I will go with you."

"And where are you taking my guests?" inquired Hieronymus, who clearly thought as little of the two Romans as I did. "That, Scapegoat, must be a secret," said Publicius, with his nose in the air.

"But I'm this man's host, and as such I'm obliged to look after his safety. Before he leaves my home, you'll have to tell me where you're taking him."

Publicius and Minucius conferred in whispers. At last Publicius looked up. "I don't suppose there's any harm in telling you," he said, with the unsubtle implication that the scapegoat's days were numbered. "We're taking Gordianus to the house of Gaius Verres."