Rome 2: The Coming of the King (33 page)

They were even left with their hunting birds, and thus did Iksahra return with the falcon feeding on her fist, each twist of its head throwing out evidence of what they had caught.

It fed to fullness before they reached the city and she had time to drop the dove beneath the feet of the trotting horses, and hood the falcon, so that when Saulos met them at the city gates, all that remained was a spot of blood on her hunting glove.

‘Your majesty!’ He was dressed in his sand-coloured silks, fulsome in his greeting of Kleopatra, smiling his victory. ‘If you would be so kind, the full council of the Sanhedrin has convened in the heart of the city to address certain matters pertaining to the recent … disturbances. We will honour them with our attendance.’

He nodded to Iksahra, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Your beasts will be treated with utmost respect, I guarantee it.’

Polyphemos brought the message, written on papyrus, rolled and sealed. It came to Berenice, in her private apartments, not to the king. Hypatia alone was present.

Hypatia watched the queen break the seal, and read, and sit suddenly, pale to the point of death. She saw her wave Polyphemos from the door; he did not want to go, so it took a swifter motion than it used to.

‘What?’ Hypatia asked, when he was gone. Dread lay on her like a morning fog, draining her as surely as any ghûl.

Berenice spoke in a voice devoid of inflection. ‘They have Kleopatra. And Iksahra.’

‘Where?’

‘They stand before the Sanhedrin. They will be charged with killing Governor Florus. The penalty is death by stoning.’

Hypatia said, ‘I killed the governor.’

‘I know that. Saulos knows it; he saw you. This is a trap. You will not walk into it.’

‘I must,’ Hypatia said, and heard her own voice as if from a distance, with a tunnel’s echo between. ‘Kleopatra is the next Chosen of Isis.’

Berenice turned her head. Her eyes were blank channels that led straight to her soul. In their depths, Hypatia saw a name form, and saw it taken away again, out of tact, or kindness, and was grateful. If Iksahra had been named aloud, she might well have lost what remained of her composure.

Berenice, queen in Caesarea, rose. ‘Then I will come too,’ she said. ‘No – do not argue. You are my gift, given by the empress. Saulos cannot touch you while I am present.’

She rang a bell for her personal maid. ‘We must change our clothing. The men of the Sanhedrin have … certain ways of viewing women. I am a widow before I am a queen and must be seen as both. You are my handmaid, and must be appropriate. We will do this alone, you and I. We have too much to lose to leave it to anyone else.’

THE AQUEDUCT WAS
a black thread in the night’s weaving, but it was behind him, and Pantera had not vomited, nor lost control of his bladder, nor screamed aloud his terror as he crawled down the long concrete trough held up on stalks of stone that looked barely strong enough to withstand the scrub of a mangy goat should it choose to scratch its back along them.

In that regard, he was a man, not a child. In all other ways of measuring, he had returned to his childhood, so great was the hold of the past in this place, where he had come to manhood, with his father pushing him on.

A slight lip rose under his fingers, which was how he knew he had reached the end of the line. The only light was from the stars which rendered everything a faint grey; his fingers, the concrete, the rock wall ahead of him that stretched, it seemed, for eternity in all directions – and the gap that was left between the aqueduct’s end and the lip of the cistern. When he was twelve years old, that gap had been big enough to fall through. For years after he had been here, his dreams had seemed all to lead to this place, where he looked over a lip of fragile stone and found himself staring down on to the backs of the circling
vultures, and then down, and down, and down to the antelopes that ran, small as ants, across the desert below.

The gap was still big enough, but the vultures had gone, and with them had gone some of the certainty that the earth must suck him from this place and drag him down to become another ant lying dead on the valley floor.

His heart tripped at the memory, his stomach lurched. He made himself remember that the gaping mouth in the side of the rock was more than big enough to take a grown man, as long as he got the angle right when he jumped.

He rolled over on to his stomach, turned in his own length, and wriggled backwards, holding on to the concrete edges of the aqueduct, gradually taking more weight on his hands until his whole body hung straight. Menachem was above him, his eyes wide as the moon. ‘We do this backwards? On our bellies?’

‘It’s the only way. Tell each man to tell the one behind him as he comes to it, but no sooner: there’s no point in letting them worry all the way up the line. Wait for me to call. In case there’s no water …’

‘You said there would be water.’

Pantera had already let go. Falling, the ghost of his youth came with him, sucking in the damp, cold air in a great breath just before he hit the water – the deep, cold, marrow-chilling water.

He bobbed to the surface, choking. Menachem’s voice echoed down, drily amused. ‘I hear that you were right.’

‘Come quickly. I’ll move out of the way.’ Pantera paddled backwards, watching the spout cut in the rock. There was more light above than he had thought, but only in contrast to the utter darkness that was the cistern. Here, it was impossible to tell the water from the walls.

Menachem arrived in a ghostly splash, vanished, and came to the surface. ‘
Cold!
’ he said.

Pantera’s teeth were already chattering. ‘We need to be fast. When we have ten men, we’ll make a chain and I’ll find the steps up.’

‘It seems to me that a ladder would rot or rust in the time since Herod,’ Menachem said.

‘It’s made of rock. There are holes cut in the wall that let a man climb up to the surface. I used them once; we have to hope they’re still intact. We don’t want to have to climb back along the aqueduct. Uphill, the swaying is worse.’

‘You’ve done that?’ Menachem’s voice skipped over the water, sharp with surprise. ‘You’ve been up and out, then back along the way we came?’

‘My father thought it would be a useful learning. I was sick with fright halfway along, and thought the sway set up by my puking would make me fall, which made me wet myself. My father said the only thing I did not stink of at the end was dung. He was right.’

Mergus dropped from the aqueduct, and then Aaron, who always followed him. They bobbed up near them, swearing.

Menachem said, softly, ‘Did he hate you?’

‘No, I think he loved me.’ Unexpectedly, Pantera found his throat too tight to say more.

‘I am not a father to offer love, but I will be in your debt for life if you can find the ladder that will take us out of this place as swiftly as you said.’ Menachem’s teeth, too, were chattering. He fought to sound even.

Pantera smiled. ‘I brought you in here. There is no debt if I lead you out again. Follow me, and make sure the men follow you in a chain, so nobody gets lost.’

He closed his eyes and called on his childhood, and then, neither twelve years old nor fully a man, struck out for the opposite side of the cistern. Men had been dropping in at regular intervals, cursing the cold. They made a line behind him, trusting.

At a certain point, he stopped. ‘Here.’ And then to Menachem. ‘Look up.’

They looked together, past the lightless stone of the cistern, and on, up through a black tunnel to …

‘I can see a star!’ Menachem made himself whisper. Even a
hand’s breadth of sky seemed too close to the Roman garrison. ‘Why is there only one? The sky should be full of them.’

‘There’s a well house above us, roofed over to keep the wind-blown grit from contaminating the water. Years ago, when I was here, I cut a small hole in the roof to see through, as you are seeing now.’

‘At your father’s behest.’

‘Not entirely. I became lost down here the first time because I couldn’t see the way out. Before the second try, I cut the hole. The ladder is here.’ Pantera took Menachem’s hand and raised it high. ‘Can you feel steps cut in the rock? As long as they haven’t worn away, we can climb out.’

He reached up to the first of the projecting spurs. He had to jump to reach it when he was twelve; now it was not even a particularly long stretch.

Menachem caught his elbow. ‘How many men will be able to stand in the well house?’

‘My father thought fifty. We will bring up the first five decades, and then move them out to shelter. That’ll be the time of most danger. I’ll go first: if there’s a guard, it will be best he believes I have come alone. If I live, I’ll whistle to call you up.’

The ladder took Pantera to the surface faster than it had done when he was young; he was stronger, and he hated the water more. No guard waited in the well house. He knelt, with his face next to the well opening, and whistled softly. Menachem joined him, and then Mergus and Aaron and then the others of the first five decades. They fitted closely in the well house, wetly cold. Pantera knelt by the door, feeling for the hinges, and the bolts that held the latch.

‘Is it locked?’ Menachem asked.

‘It never has been. A wooden latch lifts on the outside. There’s a knot hole that a man might reach through to tip it up …’ His fingers were a child’s, searching across the grain until he found the knot and hooked his knife’s tip around it and drew it inwards, slowly.

The knot came free of the wood. Wind hollered through the
tiny gap, small foretaste of its fury. Pantera put his eye to it and, for the first time this day, saw the grey-pink dawn.

He cursed, softly. ‘We’ve lost the night. We will have to call Moshe and his men soon, or they’ll be seen.’

‘Where do we go?’ asked Mergus, who had worked his way to Pantera’s shoulder.

‘The women’s palace is ahead and to our left. We can hide behind it, and call the rest up. This is the best time to attack, just as the night Watch changes with the day Watch. Those who have stood all night will be tired, those who are waking now will still be lagged with sleep. We will have all the advantage.’

Pantera’s knife slipped in the sweat of his hand. He wiped it dry on his tunic and gripped it again, drew back and back and –
there!
– let fly …

A man grunted, softly. Iron chimed on stone. From somewhere close by, Menachem said, ‘I would not have thought it possible with the wind as fierce as it is, with the man turning against the light, to put a blade between his cheek plates and the neck of his mail like that.’

Pantera forced his eyes open, not knowing they had closed: that was a thing his child-self had done that his man-self had abandoned long ago. ‘You have to do it like that,’ he said, suddenly shy. ‘If you don’t hit the larynx, they cry out and alert the others.’

Menachem was looking at him queerly. He shook himself and forced a smile. ‘He was alone. We should go on to the sons’ palace. It’s smaller than this one.’

‘Herod’s sons?’ Aaron asked, and spat.

‘Yes. They lived here before he had them slain. There’s room there for all of us. We’ll join and then go forward together.’ Pantera raised his arm in signal. Three groups of ten men slid out from behind the women’s palace in whose shade they had been hiding. The remaining seven groups made a long, narrow line, sliding along the shelter of the casement wall.

He retrieved his knife and ran with them. At a certain point,
he left the safety of the wall and dodged inwards, across the open bluff, to hide in the shelter of another tall stone wall. A malevolent wind backed with the sun, catching sand and grit to hurl at the running men.

‘Make your scarves into masks again. Leave only your eyes free. It’ll help you breathe.’ Pantera did it faster than he had done on the valley floor. The child in him was small now, watching the man do things it had barely dreamed about in his youth. He took up his knife and drew on the back wall of the palace.

‘The main palace is here, at the western edge of the casement. There are storerooms there which will still hold weapons, but the garrison has its quarters in the north, around the upper tier of Herod’s hanging villa. There are baths and stores there; it’s easiest for the men. Their weapons will be there. We will attack while the Watch are looking eastward at Moshe and his men.’

He turned to Menachem. His smile came easily, bright and sharp. ‘Now is the time to whistle. And be ready to run.’

HYPATIA AND THE
queen left the palace together in secrecy, and, in secrecy, they arrived at the small, unremarkable hall set behind the Temple, in which the city’s councillors gathered to give their opinions on matters of law and faith, these two being inseparable within the walls of Jerusalem.

Berenice was dressed in simple blues of a hue so deep it could have been taken from the night sky. Her dress and the long-coat over it were cut in the style of the Hebrew women: modest and unfussy, with not a thread of silver or gold. She wore no jewels at neck or ears or fingers. No hint of balsam sweetened the air where she had been.

Her slippers were of satin, and she walked on clouds of righteousness. Her hair was bound back in a black sheaf of perfect modesty – the first time Hypatia had seen it so – and covered with a veil of the night-blue silk. No Hebrew councillor could have deemed her anything other than what she was: a widow and a queen.

The men of the Sanhedrin had not seen her yet; the three windows of their council chamber and the tiers of candles cast their light into the centre of the hall, where Iksahra and Kleopatra stood together, black skin welded to white in their
closeness. By not a flicker, not a trembling of a hair, did Iksahra show that she knew Hypatia had arrived.

Hypatia stood in the doorway, holding herself to stillness against the turmoil of her heart. She did not let her eyes rest anywhere for long, but glanced instead at the small, lowceilinged hall, and the sixty or seventy men packed into it, dressed in their long-coated finery, crushed on to benches in a rough semicircle.