M. Scott - The Coming of the King

From his right, softly, Menachem said, ‘The stage upsets you? The light is, I agree, particularly penetrating this time.’

‘I was in Rome during the fire,’ Pantera said. ‘To see flame this intense touches memories I would rather leave behind.’

‘And the camel train? I understand there were aspects of your journey you might also like to leave behind you?’

‘Nothing we didn’t expect. Ibrahim had the worst of it, with the governor taking all his good camels in tax as soon as we arrived. Yusaf ben Matthias paid for the whole shipment in advance. Was he happy with the results? I have a silver coin resting on the answer.’

‘A silver coin is your pay for the entire journey,’ Menachem said. ‘You would rest it on a gamble?’

‘Not a gamble. I only bet on certainties.’

Menachem turned to look fully at Pantera. His face was perfectly bland. ‘Will you name for me those certainties and the nature of the wager?’

‘Ibrahim brought five barren camels on a month’s journey, knowing from the start they were not in calf. All through the month, they were the ones that we protected first, from jackals or bandits, from thirst or hunger. We considered what might be inserted into the womb of a camel to be retrieved later and decided it might be something that was worth more than its own weight in gold. Gemstones, therefore, or balsam. I bet that it was balsam. Mergus thought diamonds. Perhaps you could settle that for us?’

Menachem considered a moment. ‘You win,’ he said. ‘The camels brought balsam, equal in value to three talents of gold. Yusaf paid half a talent to the camel drover for the journey, and he will send him back with the same and horses this time, of Berber breeding, which will fetch almost as much in the markets of the desert.’ He looked up. Something close to a smile played on his lips. ‘Does Ibrahim know of your wager?’

‘Would we be alive if he did?’

‘Probably not.’ Menachem did smile then, and it lit his face, shedding years. ‘Watch now,’ he said. ‘It’s starting.’

A cymbal clashed at the stage-side. At its command, the entire theatre fell silent. To the high notes of a reed pipe, five well-muscled slaves drew on to the stage a set of thrones and benches, enough to seat a dozen, and set them so that the central thrones, adrape with silks, entwined with carvings of vines and olives, faced the very apex of the auditorium.

As promptly as the slaves departed, so did the royal retinue enter. King Agrippa led, clothed in tissue of gold, long-striding across the stage to stand in front of his throne. Berenice, his queen, if not his wife, followed a pace behind, then eleven men and women followed, draped in silks of alternating colours; the queen in blue, her women in green and the men in varying shades of amber, citrus and pale copper-gold.

Hypatia was among the women. Pantera saw her first as he would in any room she entered, as any man would, who had eyes to see. They had robed her in a shade of dark emerald green that brought out the faint tint in her eyes, and pinned up her blue-black hair so that her neck was exposed, smooth as alabaster, slim as a swan’s, thin enough to wrap his one hand round, almost.

Seen like that, a man might have thought her fragile, which would have been a mistake. Pantera had learned not to think thus in Alexandria and then Rome, when they had seemed to be enemies. He had come to be grateful for it since.

And then Agrippa had stepped apart from the rest, and drew all eyes, for he was no longer a mere man, but had become the blistering sun; dressed from shoulder to heel and beyond in tissue of gold with a filet of gold in his dark hair and diamond-studded gold on his fingers.

To a rising trill of pipe music, he stepped up on to a wooden pedestal placed at his feet by a kneeling slave. His flaring, dancing sun-fire robes hung down to the floor so that it seemed as if a far taller man stood there. Somewhere, a steward clapped his hands, once. The reed notes tumbled to silence.

As if released, the theatre hummed to quiet life again. Menachem leaned to Pantera and murmured, ‘Agrippa’s father died here in this theatre. He makes a point of dressing in gold, as did the old king, to silence those who say his death was an act of God, to punish his hubris. His sister is next to him, Berenice of Cilicia, who was married to the son of the Alabarch of Alexandria. When he died after a year of her marital bed, she married her uncle, Herod of Chalcis. When he died four years later, she married King Polemon II of Pontus, Colchis and Cilicia.’

‘Lucky man,’ said Pantera, drily. ‘How long did he last?’

A smile split Menachem’s long, lean face. He spread his palms in mock distress. ‘Polemon graces the world yet with his presence, but he no longer has the pleasure of her company. Berenice left him to return here, to Caesarea. Men say she has… unnatural relations with her brother and that they could not bear to be parted.’

‘Men often say such things of the women who rule over them,’ Pantera observed. ‘What do you say?’

‘That she is the granddaughter of Herod the Great, whose name is for ever despised, and she will for ever bear the stain of his blood; that she worships false gods, that she is given to Rome above all else, but that even so she rules Caesarea far better than does her brother and, the riots of the last half-month notwithstanding, Caesarea is more peaceful, more prosperous and more godly with her here. It is said-’ On the stage, the king had raised his hand. Menachem lowered his voice still further. ‘It is said that Agrippa sent to his sister four times begging her to come back and rule at his side. She came only after the start of the corn riots of ten years ago. They ceased within a day of her return and the city has known very little violence since. What happens here tonight may keep it at bay for some time longer. Watch now.’ He leaned forward. ‘This is what you have come here to see.’

The king’s raised hand had summoned forth a string of five blue-robed men from the front row of seats. They walked at a measured pace along the ground at the front of the raised stage. From his place high in the auditorium, Pantera saw little more than their heads.

‘Hebrew or Syrian?’ he asked.

‘Hebrew. They come to petition the king for the safety of their central synagogue, which lies now beset by scaffolding. You will have seen the harm that has fallen on it. Queen Berenice, of course, will hear them. Her response will carry more weight, but it must be given in private, and appear to come from the king.’

‘Where’s Florus?’ Pantera asked. ‘If something of import is happening, should Rome’s governor not be here?’

Menachem gave an eloquent shrug. ‘Our overseer doesn’t choose to involve himself in disputes between Hebrews and Syrians. In his view, Rome stands above such things. But if you look closely now…’

Pantera looked closely; everyone did. Across the theatre, silence fell in a thick, breath-held blanket. In it, a silver pipe sang three notes. At their dying away, the foremost of the Hebrew men left his fellows and approached the stage alone.

Seen from the height of the seating, the most obvious feature of the man who mounted the set of small wooden steps was the shining length of his beard, grizzled here and there with silver, so that he seemed sombre even when, as now, he smiled.

Beyond that, what set him apart, even from the royalty on stage, was the splendour of his robes. He wore a long-coat of midnight silk so thick it took the frantic coppered fires of the theatre and soothed them to stillness. Its luxury enfolded him, screaming wealth and restraint together, a thing rarely done here, or in Rome, or even in Alexandria, which prided itself on the subtlety of its riches.