M. Scott: The Coming of the King

The message had been from the new spymaster, the Poet, to the agent, Absolom, asking if he had yet met the Leopard. Saulos had been delighted in his muted, half-hidden fashion.

He had taken the slip of paper as if it were a gift from his god, smoothing it over and over until it lay flat on his palm. Later, he had brought a message of his own to send and they had used one of their precious birds, stolen from the old spymaster’s pigeon loft, to take the message back.

From Absolom to the Poet, greetings. The Leopard is safe in Caesarea. His enemy is in our sights. We have hopes for a swift resolution.

If bird flight were an omen, the pigeon’s swift departure from her hands at dusk was the best they could have hoped for.

The two falcons Iksahra had flown yesterday bent their heads to feed. Today’s pair ate only shreds of goat, thread-fine pieces designed to whet their appetite and give them the power to fly without leaving them sated. The falcon was her best: a three-year-old haggard caught in the wild and tamed at night with a stealth that would have surprised Anmer ber Ikshel, had he lived to see such patience in his so-impatient daughter.

Iksahra stroked its breast with her forefinger, crooning. ‘Soon, soon, soon we will fly. Just give me time to ready the horses, and to pick up your little brother. See how ready he is? Not as strong as you, but he’s keen and together we’ll-’

‘Iksahra?’

The call shattered her peace. A hound belled an answer, or a greeting, and in that was the hint of who came. Iksahra took time to settle her bird before deigning to turn to acknowledge the intruder who had dared risk the dangers of her company.

‘I am Hypatia of Alexandria. I came on the ship Krateis yesterday.’

Iksahra tilted her hand and made the falcon step back on to the leather-covered hoop that was its day perch. The bird screamed its disappointment and struck at Iksahra’s gloved hand and had to be freed, claw by claw, before she was able to shed the glove and, finally, to turn and study her enemy.

This close, Hypatia was more striking even than she had seemed on the ship, and then she had been a thing to catch all eyes; the king and his queen had both made a point of looking elsewhere, not to seem to gape.

Her hair was the deep, dense blue-black of the true Egyptians but fine, so that it shone like watered silk and caught the colours of the sun. Her skin was pale as milk, her eyes were the colour of whetted iron, sharp to pare the souls of men and women.

And she was beautiful; it was said of Cleopatra Ptolemy, queen of all Egypt, that her beauty stole the souls of all the men who saw her, but that queen had been dead for a hundred years. If she had ever had a successor, Hypatia of Alexandria was that one.

In all that time, the woman did not speak. She had patience, too.

‘You are the Chosen of Isis,’ Iksahra said presently. ‘You come from the empress of Rome and have an appointment in the palace at dawn.’

She knew these things because the slaves knew, and few others, but Hypatia nodded, pleasantly, as if her title and her appointment had always been common knowledge.

‘Polyphemos, the chief steward, is precise in his timing,’ she said. ‘I am told that I must go to the palace gates when a particular bell is struck in summons. I have long enough, apparently, to visit my hounds, to see that they are fed and watered and have rested in the night, and return. He said it was feeding time. He didn’t tell me you would be here.’

‘An oversight,’ Iksahra said. Polyphemos was an arrogant, self-important, interfering fool. If he had sent the Greek woman here, now, it was so that she and Iksahra might meet with no one to oversee them.

‘An oversight,’ agreed Hypatia. ‘Unless he hopes that you might turn me to stone. Can you do that?’

Iksahra stared at her. ‘The slaves talk nonsense.’

‘Good. It would be hard to present myself to her majesty if I were already petrified. May I visit my hounds? They travelled well, but the first days on land can be- Ah.’ A bell sounded, a silver note that hovered over the gardens and faded, slowly. Hypatia frowned in regret. ‘It would appear that I don’t have as long as I was led to believe. My apologies. I’m sure the hounds are thriving in your care. If time and the queen permit, I may take them out later. Will you be here?’

‘No.’

‘A pity.’ Hypatia bowed a little, in the desert fashion, hand on heart. ‘We shall meet again later, I’m sure.’

‘Perhaps.’ Iksahra didn’t smile, then or later. The day was broken and neither the falcon, the hounds nor the horses could mend it. When Hyrcanus came shortly afterwards, she let him talk her into taking the horses and the birds to hunt along the shore.

A thousand colours of silk rustled in harmony as Hypatia entered the audience room of the royal palace at Caesarea. Many-branched candles flared. Torches blazed on the marble walls. A multitude of flowers perfumed the air. Not since her second meeting with the emperor in Rome had Hypatia seen so much finery, and there it had all been displayed by men.

Here, there were only women. Queen Berenice, sister to the king, sat on a high dais at the room’s far side surrounded by her court. As Hypatia stood in the doorway, she heard in her mind the voice of Poppaea, Rome’s dead empress, her dead friend. ‘Berenice has the heart and soul of a king. She is our hope of peace in Judaea. We do hope for that…’

With that hope as her guide, Hypatia stepped through the vast oak doors, took three steps forward, and paused as she awaited the steward’s announcement.

‘May I present Hypatia of Alexandria, who bears with her the gift of Poppaea, late empress of Rome.’

Hands clasped at her sternum, Hypatia bowed and took another three paces in. Berenice held the centre of her entourage, a radiance of blue and silver, seated on a throne set with a shining rainbow of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, turquoise, amber. Her women sat around her, all in spring green pointed with copper. Under their gaze, Hypatia began the twelve measured paces to the throne’s foot.

The dark-haired girl who had called out on the wharf was there; the one whose outstretched arm had seemed to banish the Krateis, or at least, hold her still.

Surprisingly alert for the time of morning, the girl sat on a low stool at one edge of the dais pulling faces at Hypatia as she walked. An angled mirror-wall in silver leaf behind the throne displayed each inventive grimace, made twice as large as life.

By a quirk of the room and its angles, Hypatia alone had the benefit of this insight. Berenice and the crowd of green-clad Caesarean women who formed her court sat high up with their backs to the wall, looking down along the marble floor at the woman approaching them. They would have had to turn round to see either the girl or her reflection, a breach of etiquette that defied imagination. Mesmerized, Hypatia kept walking.

The floor sighed to the sound of her slippered feet. Geometric mosaics in black and white sprayed out on either side. Painted friezes on the northern wall showed Augustus as man and god on one side, and Roma in her guise as the virgin Athena striding into battle on the other. The goddess wore blue and silver. The women who attended her, battle-maidens all, were adorned in green, paler and more pastel than that worn by the current queen’s attendants, but close enough for the art to echo life.

Windows opened out on the remaining three walls. Half of them looked west over the ocean to where the moon’s last edge graced the busy, restless water.

The rest looked either south over tended flower gardens, textured now in shades of moonlight and grey, with a swimming pool glassy beyond; or east, towards the theatre where men worked by the sweating hundred, completing the final preparations for an evening performance. Torches bled hazy light through the thin vellum roof, moving hither and yon jerkily, so that, from the height of the palace, the men became a host of fireflies dancing within an upturned bowl laid out for the amusement of the queen and her attendants.