Rome 2: The Coming of the King

by M C Scott

  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.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  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 hi
nt 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.

  Yusaf was there, near the front, and Gideon not far behind him, but no others of the city laity that she recognized.

  The High Priest, Ananias, sat in state before them, a gold-encrusted crab trapped in the curve of a net. He rose now to speak although his voice had lost its power since he had addressed the multitudes from the temple heights.

  ‘It is unquestionably the governor’s duty to deal swiftly with—’

  A figure rose in a flurry of linen. ‘Have the accused answered the seven enquiries? Have the witnesses who speak against them answered likewise?’ The voice was the opposite of Ananias’; it rang with righteousness, bounced off the walls with its own power.

  ‘Yusaf.’ Hypatia mouthed the name to Berenice, who stood with her. ‘Although he is now a merchant in Caesarea, he was trained in the law in his youth.’

  ‘I know.’ Berenice made a finite motion of her head. ‘Ananias didn’t expect difficulty. Listen. He flounders …’

  ‘I don’t think there is reason—’ Ananias’ voice drew out, threadily.

  Yusaf cut it off at its thinnest. ‘It is the law of this court, which is God’s law; there must be witnesses who will testify against these women, and they must be questioned separately to see that they concur. They must answer in what week of years the crime took place, in what year, in what month, in what day, in what hour. If they agree on that, they must answer the nature of the crime in detail. I have not heard the accused speak in their own defence. I have not heard the witnesses speak for the accusation. I have not, in fact, heard any enquiries, nor their answers. We do ourselves a grave disservice if we let the rule of Rome remove from us the due process of law. One of these women is a princess of Caesarea, one is a native of the Berber lands. We may not—’

  ‘They reside in Jerusalem, and therefore they are bound by our laws. We may—’

  ‘Gentlemen, forgive my intrusion, but time is brief and our city lies in perpetual danger. Will you hear the address of your queen?’ Beautiful, royal, exemplary in her modesty, Berenice stepped out of the dark porch and into the light of twenty-seven candlesticks.

  The men fell silent; what else could they do? She was a vision of all they held dear, and if they remembered that they loathed her grandfather, and despised one of her husbands, it was with a small part of their minds that did not stop them from drawing a breath, and murmuring to each other.

  Except for Ananias, who rose late, bowing a little, before the force of her majesty. ‘My lady, this is not a place—’

  ‘For women. I am aware of this and I crave the council’s forgiveness for intruding upon the affairs of men. But there are times when a queen must set aside her fears and act as majesty requires. One of these women is my niece. The other, as is well known, has come here to render unto us the same service as did her father, whom we all know was ill-treated by our ancestor. I would be in dereliction of my duty did I not come here before the highest court of the land to speak on their behalf.’

  She flattered them, and they accepted it as their right. Along the benches, greying heads inclined with a new gravity and murmured to their neighbours, adding weight to the different components of her argument. The volume rose, and rose, until they could have been in a market place, except that nobody, yet, was bargaining openly. The scents of rosewater and jasmine folded before the waves of man-sweat.

  To Ananias alone, Berenice murmured, ‘My lord High Priest, if these women are spared now, it may be that my brother the king can take news of your compassion directly to Rome when he journeys westward this summer. The emperor is known to look fondly on the men who stand against the forces of corruption in the heart of his empire.’

  The emperor was known to have men skinned alive who failed to take a stand against open corruption, and the fact that they were priests of a minor local deity had never yet inclined him to mercy.

  Ananias knew that as well as anyone. He pressed his lips to a white line. His eyes flicked from Berenice to the shadows in the far side of the room.

  Aloud, she said, ‘But before you can speak, we must hear the charges against them. What is said of these two that warrants a convention of the full Sanhedrin?’

  All eyes turned to the room’s darker side, where Saulos held the shadows close about him, as a cloak.

  Slowly, with careful majesty, Berenice, too, turned her gaze there. Alone among them, she had the courage to speak.

  ‘Saulos of Idumaea. You came to Caesarea claiming friendship to my brother, and then you betrayed us. You came claiming that you held the friendship of Caesar, and in that you lied. Now you would bear false witness against my niece? Is there no end to your calumny?’

  The chamber held its breath, so that air became a scarce thing, to treasure. Hypatia took a breath, and held it and let it out, and in all that time, Saulos did not step forward into the patch of sunlight that spread before him.

  When he did deign to move, it was with his arms folded across his chest, so that his hands were almost hidden in the sand-silk; his face he arranged in thoughtful pose, of a man considering a fine point of law. His honeyed words reached them all equally.

  ‘My lady.’ He inclined his head; a dutiful subject. ‘I regret that I have fallen from your favour and will do whatever I may to right that. I regret also that you have been deceived by men and women sent for that purpose. I do not lie. I have never done so. I speak always the truth as God gives it to me.’

  He sounded humble and frank, but Hypatia heard an echo to his words, exactly as she had done through a lifetime’s dreams, so that she knew each sentence before it was spoken: his and Berenice’s. She knew, too, the actions each must take and the responses each must give. If nothing else, it gave her time to prepare herself.

  ‘What is your truth now?’ Berenice asked. ‘I have heard that you accuse my niece of murdering the governor. You were present, as was I, when Gessius Florus lost his life. You know that my sister’s daughter did nothing during the unfortunate violence in the beast garden besides protect herself from assault. I know of no man among the Sanhedrin who would not wish of his daughter that she defend herself from infamy.’

  Until that moment, Berenice had not looked directly at the council. As a woman should, she had kept her eyes cast down, her hands looped in front, long fingers linked.

  Now, she let her hot, hard gaze rake across them, one brow arched, and Hypatia saw them nod before her, as grain before a storm wind. But they rose again after and their eyes were all on Saulos, while his, at last, were on Hypatia.

  ‘You were in the beast garden? I confess, lady, that in my haste to leave the carnage after the governor’s untimely death, I had not seen that. I do now realize, though, that I was mistaken in my belief that your niece had held the knife that killed him. As you say, she defended herself with great courage against men she believed were set to ravage her, as any maiden should.’

  He was walking now, and not a man in the room could look away as he came before Kleopatra, and knelt, and took her hand and pressed it to his brow. �
�My lady, you have been sadly wronged. You will, of course, be released upon the instant.’

  ‘And Iksahra?’ Kleopatra’s voice was the mirror of her aunt’s in its hauteur. ‘If I am innocent, then no less is she.’

  Saulos rose, the perfect image of magnanimity and grace. ‘Of course. In my haste, I was mistaken. The guilty woman had dark hair, but not dark skin.’ He bowed to Iksahra. ‘My lady, please accept my apologies. You will be recompensed for your discomfort. Your beasts, too, will be returned to your care. Let me offer you an escort back to the palace. I understand the king will be leaving tonight for Antioch. I will take the palace as he leaves. It is right that I do so.’

  Two guards came on his word, glittering efficiency. Even as they led Kleopatra and Iksahra from the chamber’s minor exit, Saulos let his gaze drift past them to the entrance, as if searching for other guards, to give more majesty to the occasion. None were there; none had been stationed there. Instead, by that single act, he drew all eyes to Hypatia.

  She had not left when the chance came, even with the echo in her ears that brought a warning. In too many dreams she had walked away, fearing what might come – what was now certain – and then she had seen Saulos twist the men around him, until stones rained down on innocent heads.

  In the dreams, she had not known the two women accused, she had not known their names, or the contours of their skin, but she had known that their deaths would snap the thin thread of hope that she nurtured, that might yet lead a nation, and the world beyond it, to a kind of peace – and that therefore they must live.

  ‘My lady!’ Saulos bowed to Berenice so deeply that his brow brushed the floor. ‘I am overwhelmed by your consideration. I see that you have delivered the guilty party into our hands. Your gifts to us are boundless. We—’

  ‘You are not yet king, my lord. It behoves you not to speak as one. The king may yet remain in Jerusalem and you have no right of blood or law to occupy the royal chambers. You have already wrongly identified my niece as a murderer. Would you now also indict my handmaid, who was granted to me as a gift by my beloved sister, the late empress?’