M. Scott - The Coming of the King

‘What is your truth now?’ Berenice asked. ‘I have heard that you accuse my niece of murdering the governor. You were present, as was I, when Gessius Florus lost his life. You know that my sister’s daughter did nothing during the unfortunate violence in the beast garden besides protect herself from assault. I know of no man among the Sanhedrin who would not wish of his daughter that she defend herself from infamy.’

Until that moment, Berenice had not looked directly at the council. As a woman should, she had kept her eyes cast down, her hands looped in front, long fingers linked.

Now, she let her hot, hard gaze rake across them, one brow arched, and Hypatia saw them nod before her, as grain before a storm wind. But they rose again after and their eyes were all on Saulos, while his, at last, were on Hypatia.

‘You were in the beast garden? I confess, lady, that in my haste to leave the carnage after the governor’s untimely death, I had not seen that. I do now realize, though, that I was mistaken in my belief that your niece had held the knife that killed him. As you say, she defended herself with great courage against men she believed were set to ravage her, as any maiden should.’

He was walking now, and not a man in the room could look away as he came before Kleopatra, and knelt, and took her hand and pressed it to his brow. ‘My lady, you have been sadly wronged. You will, of course, be released upon the instant.’

‘And Iksahra?’ Kleopatra’s voice was the mirror of her aunt’s in its hauteur. ‘If I am innocent, then no less is she.’

Saulos rose, the perfect image of magnanimity and grace. ‘Of course. In my haste, I was mistaken. The guilty woman had dark hair, but not dark skin.’ He bowed to Iksahra. ‘My lady, please accept my apologies. You will be recompensed for your discomfort. Your beasts, too, will be returned to your care. Let me offer you an escort back to the palace. I understand the king will be leaving tonight for Antioch. I will take the palace as he leaves. It is right that I do so.’

Two guards came on his word, glittering efficiency. Even as they led Kleopatra and Iksahra from the chamber’s minor exit, Saulos let his gaze drift past them to the entrance, as if searching for other guards, to give more majesty to the occasion. None were there; none had been stationed there. Instead, by that single act, he drew all eyes to Hypatia.

She had not left when the chance came, even with the echo in her ears that brought a warning. In too many dreams she had walked away, fearing what might come — what was now certain — and then she had seen Saulos twist the men around him, until stones rained down on innocent heads.

In the dreams, she had not known the two women accused, she had not known their names, or the contours of their skin, but she had known that their deaths would snap the thin thread of hope that she nurtured, that might yet lead a nation, and the world beyond it, to a kind of peace — and that therefore they must live.

‘My lady!’ Saulos bowed to Berenice so deeply that his brow brushed the floor. ‘I am overwhelmed by your consideration. I see that you have delivered the guilty party into our hands. Your gifts to us are boundless. We-’

‘You are not yet king, my lord. It behoves you not to speak as one. The king may yet remain in Jerusalem and you have no right of blood or law to occupy the royal chambers. You have already wrongly identified my niece as a murderer. Would you now also indict my handmaid, who was granted to me as a gift by my beloved sister, the late empress?’

‘Most assuredly not. But, as Yusaf ben Matthias has asked, I would allow her accusers to be questioned according to the law, each separately, so that they may not confer. Four men of the garrison Guard will stand as witnesses to the governor’s murder. I ask only that this woman be held in safety while they give their testament.’

The guards were already moving; eight men, not any of those who had been in the garden. They came prepared, with chains and locks. Nobody thought to ask why the witnesses had not been brought forward to testify when Kleopatra was named the killer, or what had prevented them from conferring in the nine days since the governor’s death; under Saulos’ sway, men did not question the facts laid before them.

Berenice, who did, moved to bar the guards’ path.

‘Stop! Your duplicity is obvious to those of us who know you. Hypatia will leave here with me, now. If you wish to press charges, you may do so when the witnesses have given their testament.’

‘No, lady. Forgive me, but we will do so now.’

He lifted his hand. The guards moved with the speed of men long ago in receipt of their orders. They encircled Berenice, and then, fluidly, Hypatia, drawing the two women into a ring of iron and sweat and Latin diction, where royalty carried no weight.

Saulos’ mellifluous voice poured over them, calming the men of the Sanhedrin. ‘Your majesty will accompany my men to the palace, where we may consider at greater length your role in the events surrounding the governor’s death. We may-’

A muffled shout filtering through the closed door interrupted him. Outside, iron clashed on iron. A man swore in Latin, viciously. Another bellowed in Parthian. Briefly, the doors appeared to buckle, as if fine old oak could bend like metal; the edge of an axe appeared at the centre, embedded in the ancient wood.

Saulos took a step back. ‘The Parthian,’ he said, crisply. ‘I want him alive. Tell the men that the one who kills him will suffer the death that would have been his. They would do better to die here than that.’

Even as he spoke, the door splintered open. Sunlight spewed over the black and white floor tiles, spattered now with crimson blood as a dozen armed garrison guards were hurled bodily into the chamber.

Hypatia was swept aside, caught by the eight guards who surrounded her, who lifted her bodily and carried her sideways and set her down again, with a surprising degree of courtesy, away from the scrum of heaving, bleeding flesh and armour that occupied the central part of the floor.

It ended faster than she might have thought, with only one man dead and that one not Estaph; he was unconscious, bleeding from a wound to his head. It took four men to carry him from the chamber.

In the shiver of disarray that followed, Hypatia felt a touch on her arm and turned to see Berenice, tight-lipped and tall. ‘Would it have been better had he died?’ asked the queen.

‘I trust not.’

‘And us? Would we also be better dead?’

‘Not yet,’ Hypatia said. ‘Not all the paths from here lead the way Saulos would want,’ and then there was no time to speak because Saulos was there, in a space made for him by the guards.

His gaze ripped over them all, but it came to rest on Hypatia last. He smiled then, with the freedom of a man who has reached the limits of his own control and finds he can do what he has always wanted, and no one has the power to stop him. Nero had found that, and Caligula. And now Saulos, who hated Hypatia and the Herods equally.

Then he looked away, to the gaggle of frightened old men, and waited until they took their seats, one by one. This time, when he spoke, he raised his voice, and his words were fashioned from frost and stone, not mellow honey.

‘These women came here to continue their pursuit of sedition, treason and murder. They brought with them a Parthian mercenary as proof of their guilt. The recorders of the Sanhedrin will note it as such. As the emperor’s representative, we thank you for your legal expertise and we will proceed to execution. Not-’ He held out his flattened palm against the first thoughts of a murmur. ‘Not today, because the Sabbath begins at sunset and we must not leave a dead man hanging, nor bring down one yet living, which he will surely be. Nor tomorrow, which is the Sabbath day. They will die at dawn on tomorrow’s tomorrow.