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.