by M C Scott
The crowd’s sigh became a low hum, not yet angry, but not cheerful either.
Ananias, High Priest by appointment of the emperor, turned his head. His fat eyes rested on the etched lyre on the ring. When he raised them, they were hard as flint.
‘You do not come from the emperor,’ he said, and his voice, too, carried out and down to the sea of ears below. ‘You are a liar and a traitor to your emperor and to your god.’
The crowd drew another breath, harsher than before.
Pantera made himself smile. He scanned the horizon for signs of Mithras: a raven, a bull, a hound. He saw none of these, only the soaring hawk. ‘Your excellency, I am loyal to my emperor and to my god, who is not your god.’
The crowd was muttering now, so that it was harder to be heard. Beneath their rumblings, Ananias said, ‘And if I choose not to believe that?’
‘Then the emperor who commands both of us will wish to know why.’
‘I see.’
They might have said more, but a gong sounded from inside the walls and on that sound, drowning it in a crash of hooves on stone, Jucundus rounded the corner at the head of two hundred and forty cavalry, breasting the crowd like an ocean ship in a high swell.
In the chaos of their arrival, the fury of horses and mail, the screams of men, women, boys who had never faced cavalry, Pantera’s sense of danger sharpened. It came not from the armed men below, but from the flurry of quiet movement behind the temple walls, from the command given in a voice he knew too well, so that when, finally, the oak gates opened wide, flashing their jewels to the morning, and a figure walked out, sleek in sand-coloured silk, to stand beside the High Priest, Pantera was beyond surprise.
Two years evading capture had drawn a few new lines about Saulos’ eyes, but he was still the smooth-faced, smooth-voiced enemy Pantera had known, invisible unless he chose to show himself, but when he did, the power of his ambition could draw a thousand eyes. It was doing so now.
‘You are not the emperor’s man.’ He spoke crisply, but not loudly, so that the crowd must quiet themselves to hear. ‘I doubt even if you are the Leopard, for he is known to be loyal. We will find your true name in due course. The questioners are even now preparing the tools of their trade. The people of Jerusalem are diligent in their love for the emperor and will honour him by allowing the High Priest to donate fifteen talents of gold to Rome for the repairs after the fire. Your blood will seal the gift.’
Fifteen talents? Nobody in the crowd believed that. They made no sound.
‘I bear the emperor’s ring,’ Pantera said.
‘A forgery.’
‘Perhaps we should await the Governor Florus and ask for his opinion. He alone has seen it on the emperor’s hand.’ Pantera spoke to Ananias alone. ‘I bring also a letter from the emperor to the governor, commending me to his service in the search for the man who would destroy both Rome and Jerusalem in pursuit of a broken prophecy. His name is Saulos. He stands at your side.’
The message was rolled in his belt pouch. It was written on imperial paper and sealed with the imperial seal which was identical in all ways to the imperial ring. Pantera had written it himself, sitting alone in the night at the table in Yusaf’s room when sleep would not come, but Saulos had no sure way of proving that, short of asking Nero himself.
‘Truly? Let me see.’ Saulos stepped out of the High Priest’s shadow, and, by that single movement, made it clear who had command of whom.
Below, the crowd sucked in another, greater, breath: a hundred thousand breasts, affronted. A murmur became a rumble, became a torrent. With a single shouted signal, Jucundus deployed his men in a row along the bottom of the temple steps, forcing the people back.
In front of them all, Saulos took the message Pantera had written and tore it across and across. ‘This is not real.’
Pantera turned to Ananias and spread his hands wide. ‘Your excellency, we each speak and you cannot be expected to discern the truth. But the emperor knows. If you wish to send a message-bird now, I will compose for you a message which will confirm the truth of what I say.’
Ananias pursed his lips. A flicker of doubt burned in his eyes. He said, ‘It will take a handful of days to send a bird and get one back.’
‘Then we can wait. You cannot empty your treasury in less time than that. And in the meantime, I beg leave to commend to your lordship the words of our emperor when he sent me here: Say to Ananias the High Priest that we approve the quality of his leadership and wish that he may continue in his place until his nephew is fit to wear his robes.’
Pantera kept his gaze level. Very few men in Rome or Jerusalem knew that neither Ananias’ sons nor his grandsons featured in his plans for the future of the priesthood. The Emperor Nero was one of those who did.
Ananias’ eyes flickered back and forth, too fast to follow. He closed them, and when he opened them again, a small shake of his head was the only sign that he had come to a decision.
This time, when he raised his arm and the gong sounded, a troop of armed legionaries marched from the temple compound. These were not Jucundus’ Syrian auxiliaries, but legionaries of the Jerusalem garrison Guard; Roman citizens all, raised in perfect certainty of their superiority to every race on earth.
Two hundred men such as this in columns of fifty, four abreast, marched from the Hebrew temple, their very presence a defilement. Each man bore across his flat palms a single bar of solid gold, his muscles corded and sweat-rolled with the strain.
They came and they came and they filled the temple platform, their gold glittering in the sun like so many scattered grains of new corn on the threshing room floor.
Below, the crowd believed at last that which they had previously denied, and were struck to silent sorrow. The want of noise was as deafening as the night before battle when the ears ache for the song of the stars and there is nothing to hear but the sound of a thousand souls preparing themselves for death.
Into that silence, Ananias, High Priest of Israel, said, distinctly, ‘He is a traitor. Take him.’
He was pointing to Pantera.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘WHAT’S HAPPENING? IS it war? It sounds like war.’
Caught too far from the tall, narrow window, Kleopatra tugged at Hypatia’s elbow, trying to see past her to the shouting men, the clashing weapons, the screaming, stamping horses that were causing such mayhem around the Temple below.
She was used to people who stepped out of her way. She was used to a lot of things that Hypatia, Chosen of Isis, did not do, and just now, Kleopatra wanted to see what Hypatia was seeing, and could not.
‘It sounds like war,’ she said again, in frustration.
‘It’s not,’ Hypatia said, pressing her brow to the window’s edge. ‘It’s the prelude to an execution. The High Priest has arrested Pantera and the men of Menachem’s party are trying to free him.’
She stepped out of the way at last, and Kleopatra pushed past in time to see two men of the War Party hurl themselves at the line of the garrison Guard. The legionaries, by a miracle of self-control, held up their shields but did not respond.
‘Why are the Guard not fighting back?’
‘Someone’s ordered them not to,’ Hypatia said. ‘They’re trying not to provoke a war.’ She turned at last away from the window. Her face was white, frightening in its intensity. ‘Where are prisoners kept in this palace?’
Kleopatra closed her eyes, the easier to think. ‘There are two places: the beast garden and the cellars. For questioning, they take them to a man-cage in the back of the beast garden, behind the stables. Sometimes, if the prisoners won’t answer, they set the wild beasts on them: hounds or boar. The Hebrews can’t bear it. Before an execution, they keep them in the cellars.’ She opened her eyes. ‘But in the dream of blood and gold, Pantera is always in sunlight. It’s how we can see the blood. The cold and the dark come later.’
‘And Saulos will want to “question” him, even if he already knows the answers.’ H
ypatia gave a tight, hard smile. ‘Go now, find your aunt and tell her to petition the king for his release. Use whatever power she can. I’ll go to the beast—’
Hypatia was already leaving. Kleopatra grabbed her arm. ‘You can’t leave me behind. You can’t! It’s my dream too. I’m always in it.’
Hypatia stopped. ‘In the dream, are you watching, or are you acting?’
‘Both. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. It’s always different, you know that.’
‘But some things are always the same. What happens now, in the next hours, will change everything.’
Desperate, Kleopatra said, ‘I can show you the swiftest way to get there, through the slaves’ entrance. At least let me take you there. I won’t ask to go further.’
Hypatia took a moment longer to reach her decision. ‘Lead then,’ she said. ‘As fast as you can. But only to the door of the slaves’ entrance, no further.’
The fastest route to the beast garden ran through the slaves’ corridors on the first floor. Kleopatra led the way at a run, down the stairs and down again, then left along a corridor and right.
They passed three slaves, two carrying silver baskets of grapes, peaches, apricots. The last carried wine and goblets of gold, chased with emeralds. They smiled dutifully at Hypatia, in friendship at Kleopatra.
When they were safely gone, Kleopatra pointed along the corridor towards the vast oak door at the far end. ‘We need to go through that door.’ Black iron banded it and the lock was a hand’s length high. ‘The feeding room’s on the other side. The beasts are all fed at dawn; nobody will be there at this time of day. The door will be locked, but the key’s in a box on the right. People might break in, but they never think anyone’s going to break out.’
‘Thank you,’ Hypatia said. ‘Now go to your aunt. Tell her— What?’
Kleopatra set her jaw, mulishly. ‘You said I could come to the door. All the way to the door. We’re not there yet and there’s someone on the other side. You might need help. You promised.’
She spoke to Hypatia’s back; the woman was already walking forward, silently now, as if her feet made bare contact with the floor. The door to the feed room hung a hair’s breadth ajar. Even with so small a crack, the air in the corridor was heavy with scents of fresh meat and old fruit, of grain and milk and water. By the time Kleopatra reached her – walking silently was difficult and slow – Hypatia had laid her head against the heavy oak, pressing her ear into the grain.
At her gesture, Kleopatra came forward and did the same. With her ear hard on the wood, she closed her eyes and sent her mind through the door, a thing she had been doing since childhood.
She thought she might hear slaves preparing feed for the animals brought in late. What she heard instead were the soft movements of someone moving amongst the crates and jars and buckets and bales, picking things up, moving them. A slave would not have been so confident. Kleopatra inhaled, and smelled cat, and so …
She signalled towards the door. Hypatia shook her head, held up one finger, pointed it to herself and made a walking motion with her fingers; then, with emphasis, she held up the flat of her hand in the same signal she used to order the hounds to stay still.
Kleopatra took a breath to argue, saw the look on Hypatia’s face – and stepped smartly back to the corner, from where she watched Hypatia push open the door.
A blur of white skin and black; a taken breath; a woman moving – two women – and between them knives, as silver birds, flying.
The knives hit wood, solidly, to stand juddering, vibrating tuneful as arrows, but on a lower note.
One hit Iksahra, the Berber woman, on the shoulder. Or didn’t. Looking again, Kleopatra saw that the knife’s point had caught the loose flow of her draped clothes just above her shoulder, pinning her to the wooden panel behind.
Iksahra’s own knife stood out of the oak doorpost where Hypatia’s heart had been. But Hypatia was there no longer. She was in the room, to the right, by the tall barrels that held grain for the horses.
‘Will you drop the other knife now? Kleopatra, stay out. She has another, hidden.’
She has a cheetah, Kleopatra thought, what need has she of another knife? But the cheetah wasn’t there; she could smell it, she could hear its breathing, but not see it. Outside the door, possibly? Or elsewhere, ready to leap out when they least expected it.
If Hypatia was concerned she hid it well, and Iksahra was … Iksahra; ice wrapped round fire, hating the world and everyone in it.
For icy calm, they matched each other; both dark-haired, both tall, both much too full just now of unspoken rage. When it seemed their fury might crest, might spill over and cause untold damage, a blade clattered to the worn wooden floor, and then another, to lie among the feed bins.
Iksahra had held two knives in secret, then, not just one. But now none. Having thus disarmed herself, she crooked her finger and the cheetah was there, creeping belly-low from its hiding place behind the feed bins, ears flat to its head, white teeth flashing, tail a-twitch. It was commanded to stillness.
‘Why are you here?’ Hypatia stooped to pick up the dropped knives by feel; her eyes never left the other woman’s face.
Iksahra stood where she had been when the door opened, a figure of black and white, wreathed in loathing. ‘My business does not concern you.’
‘Everything you do concerns me,’ Hypatia said. She laid the blades on a workbench at the side, beyond reach. ‘Why do you hate the Hebrews?’
Iksahra blinked. No other muscle moved, but it was as great an expression of surprise as if she’d thrown her hands in front of her face as the Gaulish slaves did when they saw a snake.
When no answer came, Hypatia said, ‘We are here to free Pantera, prisoner of Saulos. You are Saulos’ servant, and yet you, too, are here, bearing knives and in the company of your cat which can kill a man as easily as it might an antelope. Whom do you seek to kill?’
‘Him.’ Iksahra jerked her head back, towards the beast garden. ‘The prisoner. Saulos has asked that I set the cat on him.’
‘To kill him?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it will take a remarkable degree of control to set a cat on a man and then call it off before it kills, while it has yet done enough damage to satisfy Saulos.’
‘You think I have not the skill?’
Hypatia smiled, not kindly. ‘I would not question your skill. I would question that you let Saulos command you so. Has he honour? Is he the kind of man your father was? Is he worth your service?’
Kleopatra wanted to cover her eyes, to stop her ears. No one had ever told her exactly what the Berber did to those who impugned their honour, but she had an imagination, and it fed her visions of bloody, raw-red vengeance.
She watched Iksahra take a step forward, and then stop. ‘What do you know of my father?’
Hypatia raised a brow. With a rare diffidence, she said, ‘I know that his name was Anmer ber Ikshel and he served as beastmaster to Herod the Great and then to his son, Herod Agrippa, grandfather to Kleopatra who is standing so quietly by the door. He was renowned for his skill in training beasts; it was said that he had a great cat that followed him everywhere as a hound follows an ordinary huntsman. But it was his horse-breeding that was his undoing. Anmer ber Ikshel bred the best, the fastest, the most beautiful horses the world had seen. The best of them were the colour of almond milk with black manes and tails and they could outrun the wind for days at a time. Shall I go on? Shall I list for you the ways that your father met his end?’ There was compassion there, if you listened hard for it. Kleopatra was listening very hard indeed.
So too, in her way, was Iksahra. Her eyes were wide, showing white at the rims as a horse does when wary. Her long, lean fingers shaped the signs that dispelled ghûls and kept ifrit at bay. ‘How do you know this?’ Her voice was steady, but the effort required to keep it so was clear.
‘There are ways to find out things that do not take a message-bird,’ Hypatia
said, gently.
‘What ways? Have you dreamed him? Have the witches of Alexandria sent you his ghost?’
‘Your father was famous, Iksahra. Everyone knew of him and even those now dead told their children details they will remember beyond their last breath. All I had to do was ask the slaves, ask Polyphemos, ask the men of the Watch who were detailed to escort me. They all knew his name, they all knew how he came to die. Shall I tell you what they said to me?’
With cold courage, Iksahra said, ‘Tell me. I would hear it from you, who have no love for me.’
‘King Herod Agrippa was in debt. That was not surprising, he was a profligate man and always so, but unfortunately on this occasion he owed significant sums to Gaius Caesar, known as Caligula, emperor of Rome, who had the power to break him. But Caligula was known for his love of horses and so Herod Agrippa conceived a plan to give Anmer’s horses to the emperor in repayment of his debt. He couldn’t pay for them, of course, he had no money, and he could not be seen to steal them from a man held in such high esteem. So he manufactured a crime, some fictitious treason, and had Anmer ber Ikshel killed, and claimed all his goods.’ Hypatia’s features had softened, and her voice was almost kind. ‘Anmer was warned by those who loved him of what was coming. He could not escape it, and did not try, but I heard that he sent away his nine-year-old daughter, that she might not see his ending, or know how it happened.’
‘I was told about it when I came to adulthood,’ Iksahra said, and her voice was thick with grief and loss. ‘They said he was torn apart between four of his own stud colts. My mother hanged herself. I knew nothing. Three days before, I was sent away to live with my father’s people. I didn’t know why and hated both of my parents, calling them names because they were sending me away from a place and a life that I loved, to live in a tent with people who slept with their horses.’
