M. Scott - The Coming of the King

Ishmael came back presently, beaming his success. The family had a precise and efficient system of classifying the messages that passed through their hands, for the boy did not bring the entire year’s collection, but only two short, slim cylinders, carried with the awe of a novitiate bearing sacred writings.

‘For the Leopard,’ he said, leading Pantera back into the house. ‘You may sit?’

Pantera sat on one of the two bedding rolls pushed up against the wall. Unrolled from their containers, the messages were revealed on two square sheets of finest papyrus, no thicker than spring’s first leaves, no larger than them either; each side was half the length of his smallest finger. The writing in both was finer than gossamer, one achingly familiar, old, faded with age, one new in all senses, still alien to his eye.

But both used the same code, the first one that Pantera had ever learned; he could parse it now as if it were in the original Greek. He read the older first.

To the Leopard from his Teacher, greetings. Solomon is safe and sends you his thanks. I have sent gold which will reach you by other routes. I send also my congratulations; pushed to the edges of your being, you earned your name in all ways.

Scribbled at the bottom, unencoded, was a last sentence. I send also my earnest gratitude, as from a father to his son, that you are safe.

Pantera laid the paper leaf on his knee, where it shivered in the sway of his breath. In the morning’s half-light, it wasn’t hard to conjure an image of Seneca — the Seneca of his youth — sitting at his desk in Alexandria, condemned to exile by Claudius and lucky to be alive, yet still running the most comprehensive, efficient and broad-reaching spy network in the empire.

And into that network Seneca had drawn a runaway archer’s son found thieving on the streets of Alexandria. Throughout those early years, he had driven Pantera harder than even a boy who loathed himself might have done. He had asked for more and never settled for less. He had set tasks that made the threats and conspiracies of real life seem trivial by comparison. He gave praise rarely, and always salted it liberally with criticism. To a boy who had abandoned his father in disgust, he had never once in seven years suggested that he considered himself in that role.

Except that he had. As from a father to his son…

Pantera could have read that, if things had turned out differently. He had been travelling to Caesarea on his first mission. He had been given the pass code and the address of the pigeon loft, manned by an agent of Seneca’s named Isaac.

But he had never gone. He had, in fact, been prevented from going by the order to divert to Damascus, there to aid the escape of a man who had attracted the ire of Aretas, king of Syria. It had been his first true mission, and it had nearly cost him his life, but he had come out of it with a sense of his own skill that nothing else could have given him. On leaving that city, another message had come, ordering him north and east to Parthia, an empire on the brink of war against Rome.

After that, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Gaul, Britain. Never again near Caesarea, until now, when he knew all that Seneca felt for him.

As from a father to his son…

Seneca had named him son on the night of Rome’s fire, and loved him as such. Pantera had never said that he loved his old spymaster in return. If he let it, his regret for that could eat him away to nothing.

‘Is it bad news?’ Ishmael’s angelic face peered at him, creased with concern.

‘No.’ Pantera pulled himself back to the present. ‘I was thinking of who I used to be when this was written.’

‘You were the Leopard. You’re still the Leopard.’ The name was magical to the boy, a talisman against all harm.

Pantera offered half a smile. ‘I am not the Leopard I was,’ he said.

‘Why not?’

Only the young asked such direct questions. Why not? Because of a woman and child he had loved and then killed in Britain, to keep them from Roman harm? Because of a quite different woman of another race and another place he had loved in Gaul and Alexandria and Rome? Because of a boy-thief found and sent to Britain who had loved him?

All and none of these. Unexpectedly, he thought of Hypatia, who had warned him, once, to keep always to the truth.

He said, ‘I got what I most wanted in life, and found that I didn’t want it after all.’

‘Father says that is the ruin of us all.’

‘Your father is a wise man.’

‘You haven’t read the other message.’

He hadn’t. He did so. It was brief and said nothing unexpected; except that it was old and late and didn’t say what it should have said.

To the Leopard from the Poet: your prey remains in the pearl of the east. The emperor continues to support your cause, which is his cause. We await news of your success in Saba.

He read that last again, checking his decryption in his head. We await news of your success in Saba. The Poet was young, and frighteningly efficient; latest and greatest of Seneca’s many proteges. Such a one should not still be awaiting news of the negotiations in Saba, when Pantera had sent a bird with all the necessary details as soon as he had taken the contract with Ibrahim.

He said, ‘When did this message arrive?’

Frowning, Ishmael held the cylinder up to the light. ‘The date’s on the outside of the cylinder.’ The collation of dots was not in any number system that Pantera knew. He waited while the boy’s flying fingers added up time. ‘It came… fifty-three days ago.’

‘And there hasn’t been another? Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. We know every bird. None have come from the spymaster’s loft.’

‘Nor from the emperor?’

‘No. Although Father thinks…’ Ishmael dropped his voice to a creaky whisper. ‘He thinks we may be losing some of the birds.’

‘Losing?’

‘To storms. Or disease.’

‘Or to men?’

Ishmael shook his head violently. ‘No man could take them. How would they do it? How would they know? We have told no one what we do, I swear it!’

‘But the men who bring the new carrier-birds from Jerusalem and Damascus and Rome, the other men who take the birds from your loft back to their own coops so that they may return with a message; each of these knows where you are.’

‘My father makes the trips to Jerusalem. He’s there now. The rest are all Seneca’s sworn men.’

‘Men can be bought. It happens, Ishmael, more often than you might think. Did your father take birds with him?’

‘Yes. He took a dozen to Jerusalem and will bring the same number back. He does it every fourth month in the travelling season. In between, the men come from Damascus, Antioch, Alexandria and Rome.’

‘When will he leave Jerusalem?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Then I have an idea. Send a bird to Jerusalem now, with a message to him from me. That way we’ll know if the birds are getting through.’

Ishmael chewed his thumbnail. ‘But we have only one bird left and Father never wants to send the last one before the new ones are here.’

‘This time, I think, we must make an exception. Let me write the message. If your father’s there, he’ll understand.’

Pantera used a newer code than the one that had been the standard among Seneca’s men in the days of his youth. His message was short.

From the Leopard to the Messenger, greetings. I come hunting the enemy of Israel. It may be that he knows this. If this bird reaches you, bring word in person. I will be here until the month’s end.

Leaving, Pantera took a left turn and then followed the hill down towards the Temple of Isis, richly kept, aflame with flowers in all the colours of the sun.

In the temple courtyard was a stone water trough for the use of the more distant worshippers who must ride to their devotions, and on it, a neat, swiftly scratched graffito in the shape of a wild lily with a hound alongside. The hound had one ear.