M. Scott - The Coming of the King

The Berber woman laughed, softly. ‘No guard is so stupid as to let you in with one pregnant wife and then let you out that same night with two wives and a fourteen-year-old daughter.’

‘Guards can die.’

‘Guards will die, but if they do so before dawn their brethren will know that you are on your way and your surprise is lost. Without it, you will lose the battle that is to come with the sunrise. I will not allow that.’

Pantera ran his tongue round his teeth, nodding, as if she had said something quite different. ‘Hypatia is not dead yet,’ he said, slowly. ‘We don’t know the time set for her execution. We may still-’

‘Don’t! Don’t speak of what we may or may not do, when the first parts are not yet even set in train!’ Iksahra spat at him, not a throaty human spit, but the hissing, teeth-baring spit of the cheetah. It rose, stiff-legged, like a hound, and pushed its broad muzzle into her hand.

Iksahra shook her head at its touch, and spoke to it in her own tongue. It settled again, crouching at her heel. In a short, violent movement, she jerked her head towards the open door.

‘Leave now. Kleopatra and I will do what needs to be done so that Menachem’s men may enter with the dawn. That is our task. Yours is to make sure Menachem is ready to lead them.’

Scarcely an hour after the crazy Syrian and his wife had entered the city, they returned to the gate.

That was against the law, but a sliver of silver was slid into Laelius’ palm, and another to Bibulus, and each looked at the other and shrugged. These two were not so crazy, Laelius thought; leaving now was a sure sign of sanity. He waved them on through.

A short while later, a centurion approached from the hills south of the city, cloaked against the dark, with five men at his back.

Mindful of his duties, Laelius stood in his way. ‘State your business.’

‘Mentos of the Twentieth.’ The man let his sleeve rise up, showing the marks on his arm, of valour in the worst of circumstances. ‘Our business is the emperor’s. We are seeking a man dressed as a Syrian, who takes with him another man, dressed as if he were his wife. They may have an ass or a mule.’

Laelius felt his bowels churn. Fervently, and silently, he cursed the crazy Syrian and his fat wife. He considered the lies he might tell, and abandoned them. Nearly twenty years in the legions had taught him that honesty was generally less trouble. He said, ‘Centurion, I know the man you mean. He and his accomplice entered the city at the night’s dark and left again less than a quarter-hour ago.’

‘Excellent! Then we may yet be in time to find the men they came to meet.’ The centurion produced a salute of a crispness that the garrison Guard had long ago abandoned, and a silver denarius, still sharp from the mint. ‘Spend this in my memory when you are next off duty. Your name?’

‘Gaius Laelius.’ Out of charity, Laelius said, ‘And this is Publius Vera. We call him Bibulus.’

‘I will remember those names.’ The centurion gave a small and solemn bow. ‘But best for you both not to say anything to anyone. If we succeed, your names will be mentioned. If we fail…’

If they failed, it was safer to know nothing.

He resisted the temptation to bite the coin to see if there was copper beneath the bright silver and dropped it instead into his belt pouch. ‘Not a word,’ he said, ‘unless I hear from you.’

‘Magnificent. May the rest of your watch pass in peace.’

The centurion marched his men through the gate and turned left, where the crazy not-Syrian had gone.

Laelius watched him go and set about forgetting the meeting. Soon after, he and Bibulus were relieved; he said nothing to his replacement. There was no need to talk, really, only to listen as the relief men spilled out the not-quite news that the royal family of Jerusalem was to be escorted to Antioch in Syria. The queen, obviously, was not included in the family. There was some doubt as to whether she remained alive.

The bad news was that only one century of the garrison Guard was required to attend the king as escort; the rest had orders to remain in Jerusalem and defend it against the potential attack from the south. Laelius’ century was the third of the Guard, a detachment of the Tenth legion that had grown, over time, until it was as big as the legion itself. This third century was not going to Damascus.

Laelius walked back up the inner line of the wall and reached his barracks within the half-hour. By the call of the next watch, he had drunk enough wine to believe himself back in Rome, where all salutes were crisp and legionaries were not spat on in the street.

Some time in the night it came to him that he had seen both the centurion and the crazy Syrian before, but the wine had softened the edges of his memory and he slept before he could think where that might have been. Asleep, he dreamed of Rome, and a girl he had known before he had been posted east.

In the dream, she was as beautiful as when he had met her, twenty-three years previously, unaged and perfect. Laelius brought her red wine, and Judaean olives and a lame mule, and she kissed him for it and offered her body. He was poised over her, about to enter, when a lame Syrian rose from beneath the bed and drove his sword between Laelius’ naked ribs.

Laelius knew that face, had seen it on the temple steps, and again, walking to the prison in the beast garden under armed guard; an uneven, asymmetrical face, impossible to forget. Except that he had done. And the man who was his accomplice was said to have been a centurion of the Twentieth; his name was Mergus, not Mentos.

Wide awake, struggling to breathe, Laelius stared at the dark and prayed for help from both his gods. From both, it seemed, came an answer that had always been a possibility; something he had planned without ever consciously admitting to it.

Silently, he rose and, eschewing his mail shirt and sword, donned a plain tunic. He took the seventeen silver coins he had saved from their hiding place beneath his bed and added to them the few he had earned in the night. Then, armed only with a knife, he left the barracks. Nobody stopped him; men went into the city and returned all the time.

Laelius went into the city now, but he did not plan to return. Instead, he delved deep into the lower quarter where lived a woman and her bastard son; his son. On his instruction they packed their bedding rolls, some food and some fodder on to their mule and drove it north, out of the opposite gate to the one Laelius had been guarding.

By noon of the following day they were far enough away to ensure that, had he been caught, the commander would have crucified him for desertion. They were not caught, and presently they came to Antioch and then to a small village in the northern mountains where lived his lover’s parents. Swiftly — overnight, in fact — they became his parents-in-law.

Laelius apprenticed to his wife’s father in his dotage, and when the old man died he became the village smith, in which role he lived a far longer, more prosperous and more fulfilling life than he would have done as a member of the Jerusalem garrison.

The visitor came to the cellar beneath the prison just after the changing of the guard.

Hypatia heard the second set of footsteps and nudged Berenice to warn her. They were sitting back to back for the warmth, with Estaph an arm’s reach away. She stretched out her foot and tapped his.

He whispered, ‘Saulos?’

‘I think so.’ Their voices sank into the stone and were lost.

Standing was hard, for the cold had seized their joints, but she wanted to meet him upright, face to face, near the bars, as far away as possible from the corner they had chosen to be their latrine. The stench was everywhere, but they could at least distance themselves from it this much.