M. Scott - The Coming of the King

‘We came to meet Yusaf ben Matthias. You are not he.’ Mergus spoke to Menachem, but his eyes were on Pantera, drawing him back to the world they shared. He saw the arrow’s tip taken down, heard the sigh of the string relaxing.

‘Ben Matthias has an appointment he could not avoid. He sent me in his stead, to see if you were truly sworn to Seneca, or had been sent instead by his enemy to destroy his agents now that the Teacher is dead.’

‘We are here to destroy his enemy,’ Pantera said, warily. ‘And in doing so, to save your people. If you will help us, we will be grateful. If you would hinder us…’

‘Then we would find out which is the faster, my knife or your arrow.’ Menachem smiled now and Mergus saw that he was a decade younger than Pantera, that his smile came more readily, that his face was less lined from the sun. But his eyes held the same distant appraisal, his voice the same irony, his shoulders the same set, as of a war-hound, ready to hunt.

Menachem said, ‘Yusaf ben Matthias is at the theatre, where it is illegal for anyone to bear a weapon of war. If you leave your bow where the Watch will not find it, I will take you to him.’

From a distance, the theatre at Caesarea was a swarm of dancing fireflies, caught in the blue bowl of dusk.

Closer, the gyrating sparks resolved to torches, held by taut, wary watchmen, always in pairs, never more than a short spear’s throw from the next nearest pair; between them was a festering soup of Syrians and Hebrews, of men, women and boys just old enough to carry clubs and stones and perhaps put them to good use.

Pantera reckoned their numbers in the thousands: the theatre was said to have seats for five thousand while the entire adult population of Caesarea was in excess of thirty thousand, and it seemed likely that most of them were trying to gain access. The arithmetic of that alone was explosive.

‘We should enter separately,’ Menachem said, when they were still on the outer fringes of the crowd. ‘Once inside, it would be useful if you sat next to me, but for both our sakes you should appear not to know me: a dozen different men have agents in there, and it will serve neither of us if we are thought to be in collusion.’

He was gone, ghosting through the crowds, with his head down and his shoulders hunched, as if that way he might hide the shining raven’s wing of his hair, or the zealot’s light in his eyes.

Pantera watched him until he was truly impossible to see any more. Nobody seemed to be following him through the throng.

‘Do you trust him?’ Mergus asked.

Pantera slid both hands into his sleeves and straightened the lie of his knives, slid each one out of its sheath and back in again. They moved smoothly, stayed pleasingly secure.

He said, ‘No. But I don’t mistrust him enough yet to be sure he’s lying. Can you stay outside, near the doors? I wouldn’t put it past Saulos to try to burn this place: he has an unhealthy fondness for fire.’

‘How will I warn you?’

‘Do you remember the bark of the hunting vixen that the legions used in Britain to warn of a possible ambush? And can you do it? Good.’

He clasped Mergus’ shoulder, and knew that it didn’t touch the depth of his care, that there should be more if he could think how to frame it. I care more deeply than you know, but not as deeply as you would wish. Don’t die for me. Please. He didn’t say it. He smiled, and saw Mergus smile back, worry still sharp in his eyes.

‘If you can’t get hold of me, call the Watch and get Jucundus; he cares for the welfare of his city.’ Pantera lifted his hand and watched Mergus turn back, away from the entrance. ‘Stay safe,’ he said.

‘I think not.’

Pantera caught the thin wrist that slid under his cloak, and twisted until he heard the elbow joint creak on the edge of breaking. The youth who had brushed against him gave a strangled grunt, but had the sense not to call aloud.

They were in the theatre, in the humid crush of men and women caught between the doors and the tiered seating, patiently waiting to take their places. Men on either side eyed them and decided not to intervene; they had been seen, though, and both knew it.

Pantera smiled amiably. ‘You will leave now. I will return to the gentleman in the woollen coat the coins he has unaccountably mislaid. Do you understand?’

The youth nodded, green-faced. His breathing rasped in short, harsh cycles. His eyes flitted in widening orbits, never looking Pantera in the face. In Caesarea, men or boys — the council made no distinction in terms of age — had their right hands removed if they were caught thieving in a public place. ‘I am not the Watch,’ Pantera said. ‘But I’ll call them if I see you here again. Go now.’

He let go. The youth — too old to be a boy, not yet old enough to be a man — had the presence of mind to ease slowly into the oncoming crush, rather than bolting like a flushed deer, which would surely have brought the Watch on his heels. The crowd parted and came together again like the maw of some giant sea-monster and the boy was gone.

‘You dropped these.’ Pantera tapped on a nearby shoulder. The man’s head turned, slowly. Raven hair shone with a new lustre in the lamplight. Dark, deep-set eyes stared flatly at Pantera, and Pantera gazed as flatly back.

‘I dropped them?’ said Menachem, leader of the War Party. He looked down, puzzled. On Pantera’s palm lay five brass sestertii and a silver denarius bearing the image of Caligula, a year’s wages for a boy gutting fish, or an apprentice weaver.

‘If you didn’t, then your pockets have just been picked.’ Pantera flicked his eyes towards the door, where the youth was leaving, not looking back. ‘I would think on a night with tensions such as this one, perhaps you dropped them?’

‘Thank you.’ Menachem bowed a little, from the waist. His gaze took in Pantera as if anew; his build, his height, his serviceable tunic, perhaps the two knives under his sleeves: they were not so hidden that a trained man might not see them. ‘Our people are not wealthy, however much gold they might choose to throw away tonight. I owe you thanks. Would you care to join me?’

Pantera inclined his head. He sat. Menachem sat. Below the hum of the crowd, he murmured, ‘Nicely done, but whose coins are they?’

‘If you look three rows down, you’ll see a Greek with a broken nose. He will find his purse has been cut. Not by me. The boy was almost good enough.’

And thus did Pantera take the place he had marked as he came in, the only seat left at the end of a row, which might afford a quick exit if one became necessary and yet still give him a clear view of the stage.

The stage… which was lit by a profusion of flame so startlingly bright that those coming in covered their eyes, and had to look away.

Looking at it now, Pantera counted no more than a dozen lit braziers on the platform, but behind them a bank of beaten copper took up the whole back wall of the theatre, curved to catch the pinpoints of torchlight and stir into them a thunder of scarlet and sun-fire and high-toned ambers, then multiply them a hundredfold before hurling them out across the auditorium.

Pantera sat, saturated in colour, until, presently, a priest from the Temple of Augustus emerged from behind the black-curtained wings and walked with meditative slowness across the stage, swinging a bowl of sandalwood to sweeten the sweaty air.

He was barefoot, and walked with a dancer’s grace, and yet it sounded as if he stamped past in the nailed sandals of the legions, so cleanly was the sound picked up and sent out to the listening thousands. It was, Pantera thought, a product of the copper wall and the vellum roof and a particular resonance of the raised stage. Such things were known in Corinth and Athens, but Pantera had not expected it here.