M. Scott: The Coming of the King

Hypatia bit her lip and made sure not to smile. She had given orders to emperors in her time, she knew the pitch of voice that acted as a command, whatever the nature of the words, and the Berber woman had just ordered King Agrippa II of Judaea to leave his nephew — his sole heir — in her care.

Agrippa showed no sign of having noticed. His gaze glanced unseeing over the assemblage before him — the men on the skiff, the boy, the falcon, even the cheetah — and came to rest, thoughtfully, on the Berber woman who, contrary to all propriety, wore a loose white robe that barely stretched to her knees and covered her arms not at all.

It was a man’s dress, and she was assuredly not a man. She was, in fact, as close as Hypatia had ever seen to one of the legendary Amazons, but for the fact that she bore no bow, and had plainly not amputated her own right breast, the better to fire her arrows.

The king thought the same. Hypatia watched him say as much behind his hand to a man dressed in silk the colour of sand who stood at his left shoulder, in the place of a counsellor.

The Oracles of Isis were well versed in reading words by the form of the speaker’s lips alone. From her place high up on the deck of the Krateis, Hypatia watched Agrippa say, ‘The Amazon will make a man of my nephew yet.’

The reply came swiftly, with amusement. ‘If you give her time to do so.’ The man at the king’s shoulder also let his eyes rest on the Berber woman, but it seemed to Hypatia that the shock of her touched him less than it had the king, and that he gazed instead into her soul, to the passions that burned in the glacial interior, and that he was pleased with what he saw.

And then he turned his head and smiled, and so she saw at last that the messages had been true: Saulos was in Caesarea.

Two month at sea, six months before in preparation, a year before in hunting, had wound her tighter than she knew. She felt the heat of his gaze pass over her and move on, and opened her fists and wiped away the sudden greasy sweat on the weather-fine wood of the mast.

In the temple, she had been cloaked and cowled. Her voice had not been her own; her body had been the hollow reed through which Truth spoke. She had said so to Pantera, to Mergus, to the ailing Empress Poppaea in her private apartments as they had planned all that might happen.

Saulos saw the Oracle, he did not see Hypatia. I will know him and will not be known. As the empress suggests, I will take ship to Caesarea and deliver her gifts while you travel overland. Whichever of us finds him first will alert the others.

Hypatia turned her gaze to the city, to the bright houses and brighter gardens, to the merchants and traders and slaves and housekeepers and ladies and courtiers and counsellors and men of the Watch who flooded the dock and the nearby streets.

It did not look like a city on the verge of riot and revolution, but Hypatia had spent half her life visiting cities and states on the verge of war; she knew the taste of the air and the sounds of men and women trying to pretend that life had not changed and would not change. A smear of black smoke somewhere in mid-city was darker and thicker than it should have been and somewhere distant, women wailed a death.

With a nod to Andros to let him know she was all right, she gathered her dignity and stepped down the plank on to the dockside and into the maelstrom that was Caesarea.

Mergus counted thirteen crosses marking the eastern entry to Caesarea; seven on the south side of the path that led to the closed gates, six to the north. Old bodies hung there, desiccated, scentless bones held together by tags of tendons, too dry now for the vultures.

Before the front riders reached them, the gates opened and a detachment of the city Watch rode out; fifteen armed and armoured men on fresh horses, who spread out in a row across the sand.

Ibrahim’s train halted, smoothly. Even the camels, who had smelled water, made no effort to forge through the line of polished iron.

At the rear of the column, Mergus and Pantera leaned forward on the pommels of their saddles showing every sign of weariness, hunger and thirst — all of which were genuine — and of boredom, which was not.

‘If Saulos knows we’re here…’ Mergus murmured.

‘He will clear one of the crosses for each of us,’ Pantera said. ‘Try to get one facing the sun. Death comes faster that way.’

Pantera kept his quiet gaze on the camels ahead; in this guise, he was a Nabatean archer of limited imagination and no particular fear of Rome. Mergus, who had seen the scars on his body, and had spoken to some of the men who had made them, cursed and spat and hunched his back against the dead, and made sure he knew the fastest route to freedom.

Best to go left, he thought, south, towards Jerusalem where the Hebrew zealots, however mad, might take in a renegade centurion and his half-breed friend if they could prove themselves useful with weapons.

But no shout came, no hands fell on their shoulders, no blades were thrust in their faces with threats and menace. The camels, horses and men of Ibrahim’s train were inspected by a decurion, who introduced himself as Gaius Jucundus, commanding officer of the city Watch. He greeted Ibrahim affably enough and commiserated with the men for their wounds as he rode slowly down the line.

‘There’s still time to leave,’ Mergus said, as he came closer. Just. Maybe. If their horses were not too tired. If the Watch were slow to see them go.

‘Not yet,’ Pantera said. ‘Let your sleeve come up. See if they know who you are.’

Obediently, Mergus made as if to stifle a yawn and, in doing so, let his right sleeve rise a little. On his forearm above the centurion’s baton, the twinned XX of the Twentieth legion had recently been extended by new lines to form the double Vs of the name Valeria Victrix, given after the bloodbath of Britain’s rebellion. Above the legion-sign, older, a lion stood over a bull, and both were topped by a raven.

The inkwork of the god-mark was poor, blued almost to invisibility against Mergus’ olive skin, but a man did not rise to the rank of Watch captain without sharp eyes and a sharper mind and a working knowledge of the gods who held the legions close.

Jucundus spun his horse neatly, bringing it to stand just in front of Mergus. His men might have been Syrian, but he was a Roman of equestrian stock, with the hooked nose and prominent brow that marked such men, as if they were all cast from the same mould. His eyes, when he raised them, held a frank, friendly curiosity.

‘If I tell the men what you are,’ he said, ‘they’ll drag you from your horse and ply you with wine and whores. Shall I?’

‘Later, maybe.’ Mergus shrugged a shyness that was only partly feigned. His past with the legions was the reason he had been taken on as outrider in the first place; he had no intention of hiding it. ‘I’ve given my oath to see Ibrahim’s camels safely sold and we’ve already lost the best to bandits. I’d hate to be carousing while the rest were stolen.’

‘Camels are hard to hide,’ Jucundus said. ‘In Caesarea, small men steal small things; the coins and gems that can be swallowed and retrieved two days later, or denied with plausibility. If anyone steals your camels, it’ll be the governor claiming them as tax.’

A brief pause held them a moment. ‘He’ll take a tax on the beasts before they’re sold?’ Mergus asked.

‘It’s his new way, started this spring. He’s a Greek, which means he’ll extort more of whatever you’re trading if you’re selling to the Hebrews rather than the Syrians, who count themselves almost wholly Greek. Take that as fair warning, and if you pass it to Ibrahim, don’t say it came from me. But for now, you have an escort. The Watch will keep you safe until you reach your inn.’