M. Scott - The Coming of the King

All this halted when Menachem began to walk to the centre of the valley. A hundred men, more, laid down their weapons and clustered around, keeping a respectful distance, but still close enough to hear and be heard.

Pantera’s look sent them back. Catching up with Menachem, he walked with him towards the uninhabited centre, although even at this distance, he spoke softly. ‘You heard Ishmael’s message? The city Watch in Caesarea has slaughtered the Hebrew community. Twenty thousand dead.’

‘I heard,’ Menachem said. ‘Jerusalem will be next if we don’t act soon.’

‘Saulos has less than three thousand men,’ Pantera said. ‘One hundred thousand Hebrews live in the city, even when it is not crowded for a feast day.’

‘He has sent for help,’ Iksahra said. ‘I went out this morning to hunt his doves. I caught one with a message coming in, not going out. If he hadn’t sent one already, he will have done so today.’

Menachem walked ahead of them awhile. When he turned, his face was tight, his lips made a fine, hard line. ‘They’ll send the Twelfth to assault us,’ he said. ‘It’s a ten-day march, maybe more if they bring the local infantry with them.’

‘If we march now, and set camp overnight, we can be at Jerusalem by tomorrow’s dawn.’ Pantera turned to Iksahra. ‘How is the Guard arranged?’

‘They are in the fortress of the Antonia, next to the Temple, all but one century that will have left by now, escorting the king and his family to Damascus. Except Berenice. She and Hypatia are imprisoned. Estaph’s death will begin on tomorrow’s dawn if Saulos has his way. The women will follow him.’

‘What of Kleopatra?’

‘She is safe with Yusaf. Hypatia wants me to take her to Alexandria.’

‘Will you?’

‘Not while the Chosen of Isis remains alive and imprisoned.’

Iksahra had turned away from him so it was impossible to see her face, to read more beyond the changing textures of her voice.

They came to the valley’s end and climbed steps cut in the rock to a high, hidden place from where it was possible to see Masada to the south and, almost, if one stared hard at the horizon, Jerusalem to the north. The sun stood overhead, shrinking their shadows.

Pantera said, ‘You said Yusaf had sent you with a second message?’

‘Here.’ Iksahra withdrew the scroll of papyrus from her belt pouch a second time. It was blotted with ink, creased, torn at the corners as if many men had held it. Menachem cracked the seal between his thumbs and unrolled it with reverence, as if it were sacred scripture; which it was, almost.

Over Menachem’s shoulder, Pantera read a litany of names written in Hebrew, beginning with Menachem’s own and rising back through his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfathers and others and others strung up the page in ever widening lines. At one side, a column of signatures had been added, a little apart from the rest. Yusaf’s name was first, then Gideon’s, then all of the Sanhedrin, one after the other.

At the end, Menachem let it spring closed. He raised his eyes, found Iksahra, and then Pantera. ‘Tell me what you have just read.’

‘Nothing that you don’t already know. You are of the line of David. You fulfil the promise of the psalm that the fruit of his body shall sit upon the throne of Israel. What is new in this, what changes everything, is that every man of consequence in Jerusalem has signed the proof of your lineage. The whole Sanhedrin is here. They are saying that they will acknowledge you as the rightful king of Judaea. You only have to take the throne.’

‘If Saulos saw this…’

‘He would crucify every man who had signed it. They take a risk, in order to support your risk.’

Pantera gazed out across the open plain. Here, this close to Masada, it was empty desert, home to the antelopes and hyenas, but the haze in the distance was many shades of green, where cedars grew thick as fleece across the hills, and date palms and olive groves wrought patchwork patterns on the fertile slopes around Jerusalem.

Thoughtfully, he said, ‘We must anoint you king in a river, as it says in the scriptures. Gideon can do that, with witnesses who will swear to it. Everything must be done as it was written.’

‘And if I am not that king? How does your god punish hubris?’

‘My god punishes no one. Men do that to each other, or to themselves when they think they have reached too high. You are not reaching too high.’

When he heard no reply, Pantera turned back, away from the plain. ‘Your city needs a ruler. The whole of your nation waits for someone who can bear the weight of sovereignty with wisdom and fortitude. Did you think the chance to rule was a gift? You could have asked Nero, or Claudius, or the poor mad fool Caligula. They could tell you that ruling is a curse. It takes a strong man to withstand its pressures. You are that man.’

Menachem’s gaze seared his face. ‘What would you have me do?’

‘Enter Jerusalem as Israel’s anointed king. Fight anyone who stands against you. Do whatever it takes to secure your nation’s future as a strong and stable state. You can do this.’

‘You can do this,’ Iksahra said in echo, from his other side. ‘You must. It is why I was sent.’

The mule was not only lame, but massively overburdened, or such was the assessment of Laelius, the harassed garrison guard on duty that Sabbath dusk at the small southernmost gate leading into Jerusalem. He and his gate partner, Bibulus, had watched for half an hour now as the unfortunate beast grew from an ant on the horizon to a full-grown gelding, plodding forward, ears flopping down to its muzzle.

A skinny Syrian trotted along behind, cursing and thrashing the beast with unnerving monotony: thump, thump, thump, once every third stride, just out of rhythm with the lameness. He didn’t even have the sense to beat the mule, but struck the left-hand pannier, giving forth with each stroke a pungency of garlic so thick and so strong he could have carved up the very air and sold it at market.

The Syrian did not consider that; he was as foolish as his mule, while the veiled and hooded woman who slumped astride it humming discordant Syrian lullabies was… vast. Overwhelming. Too huge to contemplate and certainly too big for the unfortunate beast that was forced to support her.

With awe in his voice, or disgust, Bibulus said, ‘She’s pregnant.’

Laelius felt his gorge rise as his mind supplied unwanted images of a skinny gap-toothed Syrian and his vast wife locked in the throes of coitus. They passed uncomfortably close. The Syrian smiled at him; his wife crooned her ditties. Among the garlic, Laelius caught an eye-watering stink of civet. The mule was definitely lame.

Neither guard made an effort to stop the pair; there had been no specific edict against men walking into the city at night, only about their leaving it.

Laelius held his breath until they had gone, then leaned in relief against the wall and took a long drink from the wine jug that was better company than Bibulus. He ached for the sound of Roman voices speaking Roman thoughts. He offered a prayer to Jupiter Dolichenos that the rumours were true and his legion might evacuate this godforsaken city before the full moon.

In Yusaf’s elegant house in the city, Kleopatra woke from dreams of death and cold and the awe of being Chosen when she had no idea what that meant or what to do. She lay muzzily on a pallet nursing the panic that had begun when Hypatia had named her, and only when her heart had stilled did she hear voices in the air around her, and her name, spoken twice in fast succession, once by a woman.

She opened her eyes and found that there was a mule in Yusaf’s beautiful dining room, which had become, perforce, her bedchamber, and a figure with black teeth who stank of garlic leaning back against the wall with his eyes shut, plainly too exhausted to stand much longer, and certainly beyond the care it might take to wash.