M. Scott - The Coming of the King

‘The main palace is here, at the western edge of the casement. There are storerooms there which will still hold weapons, but the garrison has its quarters in the north, around the upper tier of Herod’s hanging villa. There are baths and stores there; it’s easiest for the men. Their weapons will be there. We will attack while the Watch are looking eastward at Moshe and his men.’

He turned to Menachem. His smile came easily, bright and sharp. ‘Now is the time to whistle. And be ready to run.’

Hypatia and the queen left the palace together in secrecy, and, in secrecy, they arrived at the small, unremarkable hall set behind the Temple, in which the city’s councillors gathered to give their opinions on matters of law and faith, these two being inseparable within the walls of Jerusalem.

Berenice was dressed in simple blues of a hue so deep it could have been taken from the night sky. Her dress and the long-coat over it were cut in the style of the Hebrew women: modest and unfussy, with not a thread of silver or gold. She wore no jewels at neck or ears or fingers. No hint of balsam sweetened the air where she had been.

Her slippers were of satin, and she walked on clouds of righteousness. Her hair was bound back in a black sheaf of perfect modesty — the first time Hypatia had seen it so — and covered with a veil of the night-blue silk. No Hebrew councillor could have deemed her anything other than what she was: a widow and a queen.

The men of the Sanhedrin had not seen her yet; the three windows of their council chamber and the tiers of candles cast their light into the centre of the hall, where Iksahra and Kleopatra stood together, black skin welded to white in their closeness. By not a flicker, not a trembling of a hair, did Iksahra show that she knew Hypatia had arrived.

Hypatia stood in the doorway, holding herself to stillness against the turmoil of her heart. She did not let her eyes rest anywhere for long, but glanced instead at the small, lowceilinged hall, and the sixty or seventy men packed into it, dressed in their long-coated finery, crushed on to benches in a rough semicircle.

Yusaf was there, near the front, and Gideon not far behind him, but no others of the city laity that she recognized.

The High Priest, Ananias, sat in state before them, a gold-encrusted crab trapped in the curve of a net. He rose now to speak although his voice had lost its power since he had addressed the multitudes from the temple heights.

‘It is unquestionably the governor’s duty to deal swiftly with-’

A figure rose in a flurry of linen. ‘Have the accused answered the seven enquiries? Have the witnesses who speak against them answered likewise?’ The voice was the opposite of Ananias’; it rang with righteousness, bounced off the walls with its own power.

‘Yusaf.’ Hypatia mouthed the name to Berenice, who stood with her. ‘Although he is now a merchant in Caesarea, he was trained in the law in his youth.’

‘I know.’ Berenice made a finite motion of her head. ‘Ananias didn’t expect difficulty. Listen. He flounders…’

‘I don’t think there is reason-’ Ananias’ voice drew out, threadily.

Yusaf cut it off at its thinnest. ‘It is the law of this court, which is God’s law; there must be witnesses who will testify against these women, and they must be questioned separately to see that they concur. They must answer in what week of years the crime took place, in what year, in what month, in what day, in what hour. If they agree on that, they must answer the nature of the crime in detail. I have not heard the accused speak in their own defence. I have not heard the witnesses speak for the accusation. I have not, in fact, heard any enquiries, nor their answers. We do ourselves a grave disservice if we let the rule of Rome remove from us the due process of law. One of these women is a princess of Caesarea, one is a native of the Berber lands. We may not-’

‘They reside in Jerusalem, and therefore they are bound by our laws. We may-’

‘Gentlemen, forgive my intrusion, but time is brief and our city lies in perpetual danger. Will you hear the address of your queen?’ Beautiful, royal, exemplary in her modesty, Berenice stepped out of the dark porch and into the light of twenty-seven candlesticks.

The men fell silent; what else could they do? She was a vision of all they held dear, and if they remembered that they loathed her grandfather, and despised one of her husbands, it was with a small part of their minds that did not stop them from drawing a breath, and murmuring to each other.

Except for Ananias, who rose late, bowing a little, before the force of her majesty. ‘My lady, this is not a place-’

‘For women. I am aware of this and I crave the council’s forgiveness for intruding upon the affairs of men. But there are times when a queen must set aside her fears and act as majesty requires. One of these women is my niece. The other, as is well known, has come here to render unto us the same service as did her father, whom we all know was ill-treated by our ancestor. I would be in dereliction of my duty did I not come here before the highest court of the land to speak on their behalf.’

She flattered them, and they accepted it as their right. Along the benches, greying heads inclined with a new gravity and murmured to their neighbours, adding weight to the different components of her argument. The volume rose, and rose, until they could have been in a market place, except that nobody, yet, was bargaining openly. The scents of rosewater and jasmine folded before the waves of man-sweat.

To Ananias alone, Berenice murmured, ‘My lord High Priest, if these women are spared now, it may be that my brother the king can take news of your compassion directly to Rome when he journeys westward this summer. The emperor is known to look fondly on the men who stand against the forces of corruption in the heart of his empire.’

The emperor was known to have men skinned alive who failed to take a stand against open corruption, and the fact that they were priests of a minor local deity had never yet inclined him to mercy.

Ananias knew that as well as anyone. He pressed his lips to a white line. His eyes flicked from Berenice to the shadows in the far side of the room.

Aloud, she said, ‘But before you can speak, we must hear the charges against them. What is said of these two that warrants a convention of the full Sanhedrin?’

All eyes turned to the room’s darker side, where Saulos held the shadows close about him, as a cloak.

Slowly, with careful majesty, Berenice, too, turned her gaze there. Alone among them, she had the courage to speak.

‘Saulos of Idumaea. You came to Caesarea claiming friendship to my brother, and then you betrayed us. You came claiming that you held the friendship of Caesar, and in that you lied. Now you would bear false witness against my niece? Is there no end to your calumny?’

The chamber held its breath, so that air became a scarce thing, to treasure. Hypatia took a breath, and held it and let it out, and in all that time, Saulos did not step forward into the patch of sunlight that spread before him.

When he did deign to move, it was with his arms folded across his chest, so that his hands were almost hidden in the sand-silk; his face he arranged in thoughtful pose, of a man considering a fine point of law. His honeyed words reached them all equally.

‘My lady.’ He inclined his head; a dutiful subject. ‘I regret that I have fallen from your favour and will do whatever I may to right that. I regret also that you have been deceived by men and women sent for that purpose. I do not lie. I have never done so. I speak always the truth as God gives it to me.’

He sounded humble and frank, but Hypatia heard an echo to his words, exactly as she had done through a lifetime’s dreams, so that she knew each sentence before it was spoken: his and Berenice’s. She knew, too, the actions each must take and the responses each must give. If nothing else, it gave her time to prepare herself.