M. Scott - The Coming of the King

Resting on the trough, he scratched his own sign of the bull alongside Hypatia’s mark of the lily, and gave the hound its second ear to show that he understood that she had seen Saulos, then turned back up the hill and made his way back to the inn to return the stolen tunic to a night-slave not yet risen and tell Mergus all he had found.

The noise hid in the sea-mist that rolled over the palace gardens, almost, but not quite, private. Hypatia caught the sound’s thread and followed it along a paved path past a series of three marble fountains, on each of which a weed-clad Oceanid cavorted in bronze, spilling water from hand or hair or heel.

Beyond them, at a corner where the cyclamens and orchids wove a pastel carpet, she turned left towards the sea and passed through avenues of scarlet tulips, dripping dew fat as blood. There, at the garden’s end, a set of stairs led down to a pair of iron gates and on the steps a dark-haired girl sat slumped with her head in her hands, sobbing just loudly enough to be audible throughout the gardens.

Hypatia crouched on the top step and waited a while, watching. When it was clear she was not going to be acknowledged, she said, ‘Kleopatra?’

The girl’s head snapped up. She had sharp features, honed by eyes that held exactly the same startling gaze as her aunt Berenice’s, but that these were greener and paler now than they had seemed in the lamplight, almost the colour of the deep ocean sea. A tear slid down one cheek, sharp as a diamond.

‘Is this because I caused the queen to send you out of the audience room the other night?’ Three of the five days had passed until Hypatia was due to attend the theatre. Slowly, she was learning where she could and could not go.

‘Oh, that.’ The girl tipped her head, considering. Plain on her face was the calculation of what she might gain by agreeing with Hypatia’s suggestion.

Honesty, or pragmatism, won. ‘No. It’s Iksahra, the black beastwoman. She promised she’d let me fly the falcon before we go to Jerusalem, and we might ride at any moment. But she’s taken Hyrcanus and his tiercel out instead. She loves him — Hyrcanus, not the bird. They hide in the horse stalls and fornicate.’ That last was said with all the boundless venom of a wounded girl-child.

Hypatia, who did not believe it, let her eyes grow wide. ‘Does your uncle, the king, know that?’

‘I’ve told him, so he must.’ Kleopatra stood up, dragging her fingers through her mist-sodden hair. She wore a plain, undyed linen tunic, belted with leather, not silver. If Hypatia had not known her already, it would have been altogether too easy to mistake her for a well-dressed slave. In this palace, the slaves were dressed in fabric of better weave than at least half the city’s population.

Kleopatra said, ‘You’re the Chosen of Isis.’

Hypatia had heard her title spoken in awe and hope, in fear and horror, in longing, in grief, in love. More rarely than any of these, she had heard it said in hate, by priests of other gods who fell in the shadow of her own.

She had never heard it spoken as an insult before; even Iksahra had managed to keep the inflection from her voice. She inclined her head. ‘I am.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why were you Chosen?’

No one in twenty-five years had asked that. Hypatia closed her eyes, the better to think. The better, in fact, to ask the god who sometimes gave answers.

Not today. Her mind was empty of all but the horror of the night’s dream. It was coming continually, now that Saulos was close.

Opening her eyes, she said, ‘I had dreams as a child.’

‘True ones?’

‘Dreams are rarely completely true. They show the essence of what might be; the skill is in the reading. But I had vivid dreams and they felt real to me, which was what mattered. And I acted on them, which mattered too. If you honour your dreams, they will honour you.’

‘My dreams frighten me.’

A wind blew, there in the garden, shifting the scents of wild and tame flowers. A high, fine note sounded in Hypatia’s ear, the warning whistle of the gods. ‘Do you act on them?’ she asked.

Abruptly, the girl stood, brushing her hands on her tunic. ‘Why are you here?’

‘I brought two hounds as a gift to Queen Berenice from the empress of Rome. I came to see they were being well cared for.’

‘The empress of Rome is dead.’

‘I know. But her majesty ordered me to bring them while she was still alive.’

‘From Rome?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it true the emperor has taken a boy to wife in place of the empress, and made him a woman?’

‘It wasn’t when I left.’

Strictly speaking, she spoke the truth: the boy in question had been gelded and was being groomed as Nero’s wife, but had not actually been married at the time the Krateis sailed. Hypatia was an Oracle and Oracles never lied. Never.

To avert another silence, she said, ‘I should go to the beast garden. I want to take the hounds out for a run along the shoreline. They were on board ship for a month; even now, after three days on land, they crave sea air and flat ground.’

Not only the hounds sought freedom and clean air. Hypatia thought perhaps her own craving was there to be read, had the child the necessary literacy. She made no particular effort to hide it.

Kleopatra’s smile was sharply fierce. ‘Can you ride a horse? A good horse?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you can come riding with me and bring your hounds for exercise!’ She smacked the stone step in triumph. ‘Nobody will see us leave if we go before the mist rises.’

Hypatia said, ‘The mist’s rising now. If you look down to the sea, it’s blue again.’

Kleopatra’s hair sank straight to her shoulders. When, as now, she shook her head, the morning’s faint sun spun around her. ‘We have an hour at least. The king doesn’t rise early any more. Not since Saulos came.’

She was a fountain of facts. ‘Are we going to look for Iksahra and her falcons?’ Hypatia asked.

‘What do you think?’

They were already walking through the iron gates. Beyond was the king’s beast garden, stocked with hound kennels and stables and mews for the hunting birds. To one side, in an iron cage bigger than the perfectly serviceable, well-fitted room in which Hypatia had spent the night, Iksahra’s cheetah lay on an elevated tree branch, left behind that the beastwoman might give the young prince, Hyrcanus, her full attention. It yawned as they approached, showing perfect, pearline teeth, long as eating knives. They walked close past it, to show they were not afraid.

At the stables, Kleopatra didn’t have to give orders. As she rounded the corner, stable hands ran to make her horse ready, and then did the same for Hypatia. Both mounts were red mares, both kindly, clean-limbed, built for speed but not stupidly so.

The kennel-men loosed the two hounds Hypatia had brought and they came joyous to heel, tails beating the air, muzzles wet with the need to hunt. Long-legged, rough-coated, their heads were high as her waist, and when they stood on their hind limbs in greeting their front feet reached her shoulders. She had named them Night and Day; the bitch dark as winter wood, the dog the gold-fawn of desert sand.

Hypatia fed them the meat she had brought from the palace kitchens, not much, just a handful, to remind them that they loved her, not the Berber woman who was beastmaster.

Kleopatra had mounted lightly. On horseback, she grew in stature and fire, became a hunting cat in her own right with polished jewels for eyes. With a hound at either hand, Hypatia looked up at her.

‘We need to be clear. Is this an offer from a friend, a request for the Chosen of Isis, or an order from a princess of Caesarea?’