The Coming of the King

Chapter Twelve

Mergus stood still and a torchlit tide of people passed him by. He was wearing an outrider’s tunic and plain sandals with a plain eating knife at his belt, given to him by Menachen to replace the one he had lost. It was sharpened along both edges to the point where he could use it as a razor, but outwardly it did not look like a soldier’s weapon.

Certainly, he had no gladius with which to run an opponent through, no nailed sandals to stamp on his skull and crack it open, sudden and satisfying as a hammered nut. Even so, the breadth of his shoulders, or the tilt of his head, or the flat line of his brows, marked him as a legionary and the citizens of Caesarea, men and women, Hebrew and Syrian alike, gave him a clear berth by lifelong instinct without ever knowing they’d done it.

He was free, then, to watch as Pantera stepped into the throng and was instantly lost, swept on towards the theatre by people who did not know him, but equally did nothing to avoid him. No halo of space marked him as different. Nobody paid him any attention at all until he reached the theatre door, where he had to haggle for entry exactly as did all the other strangers from outwith the city whose names were not known to the Watch.

And then, because the tide was still flowing, Mergus was able to see the other man in the living, heaving ocean about whom there was also a halo, not because he held himself with the bearing of a legionary but because he was too big to offend, and so clearly a fighter; a bull of a man with a head fully shaved, with bear’s shoulders and hams for fists and pegs for teeth, of which two were missing. He bore two short twin-headed axes, one at either side of his belt; if the passing men let their eyes rest on anything as they veered to avoid him, it was those.

Mergus hunched his shoulders, tucked his chin into his chest and cut sideways across the flow. He laid his hand on the big man’s arm, ready for a swing if it came. It did not. The man turned, his face open, ready, entirely free of guile.

Mergus bowed. ‘I am Appius Mergus, lately a centurion of the Twentieth,’ he said. ‘You, I believe, are Estaph the Parthian, whose daughter is named Eora. You helped a friend of mine to remove a pig’s head from unfortunate surroundings. He would want me to thank you keeping watch for his safety tonight.’

The bear-man’s face passed through a recognizable sequence from suspicion to contemplation to interest. It stuck at the last. ‘May I know how you learned my name?’

‘My friend spoke of a man with bear’s shoulders and a bare head, and of his infant daughter, of her beauty and intelligence; of the sagacity of her father, who is a merchant, but also, he thought, a warrior of some renown.’

That was the simple version, and almost true. Pantera’s description had been precise, complete and accurate but it was what he had added at the end that mattered. He looks bored. And bored men seek entertainment. If he’s with us, he will be useful. If he’s against us, he will be difficult. Talk to him if you get the chance, find out which.

On the basis of that, Mergus had made his own assumption, which was that a certain kind of individual, having met Pantera, was inclined to follow him closely, if not out of desire or admiration, then in the understanding that where he went, life was always interesting.

The tilt of Estaph’s head, the open question in his eyes, was living proof of the theory. Mergus wished he’d placed a bet.

He said, ‘Our friend has gone into the theatre, to learn how much the Hebrews will pay to preserve their synagogue. I am here to see that no harm befalls him when he comes out. You, however, have a wife and daughter to protect on a night when Caesarea’s wrath might boil over into violence. Should you not be with them?’

Estaph shook his head. ‘They went with a pack train to Damascus the evening after I met your friend. They will stay safely with my wife’s father until I can return.’

‘In that case…’ Mergus made a small gesture of invitation and saw Estaph’s smile spread wide. ‘Our enemy is a man of skill and imagination. He is not Pantera’s twin, but it is useful to assume that he knows all that we know. I imagine we will not have long to wait before-’ He spun quickly on one heel, tracking a man’s movements on the edge of the crowd. ‘Do you see the Greek with the black beard on the crowd’s furthest edge?’

‘The one walking away from the theatre, towards the city centre?’

‘Yes. His name is Kleitos. He has already tried to kill us once.’

‘Then we should kill him?’ said the big Parthian hopefully, and laughed at the look on Mergus’ face.

Mergus drew his fine-honed eating knife. ‘I had heard the Parthians were the most skilled men in the empire in the use of a hand axe at close quarters. It would cheer my night immensely to see you prove that true.’

In the theatre, Pantera watched Yusaf kneel before his king. The Hebrew’s voice was hurled out to the audience by the beaten copper wall. Even so, four thousand men and women held their breaths, straining to hear him. For effect, the reed pipe sweetened the air. Menachem did not strain. He sat with his head in his hands, as if wishing himself elsewhere.

‘We would hear your petition,’ Agrippa said.

A steward in long, gilded sleeves unrolled a scroll at Yusaf’s side. The merchant glanced at it, but gave no sign of reading directly. To Pantera, it looked as if he knew his words by rote. His words rang brazen through the air.

‘We, the Hebrews of Caesarea, cognizant as we are of the honour done to us by our late king, Herod the Great, and all his kin in the creation of this city, wish publicly to proclaim our precedence above those of other tribes and other gods. Our city is a Hebrew city, founded by a Hebrew king and ruled by his grandson. But in this, our city, foul men despoil our worship. We will not soil our king’s ears with the detail, but what has been done is known in every street and avenue from the harbour to the outer walls. We are reasonable men and do not wish strife with our neighbours. Therefore we bring now to the king eight talents of gold, and respectfully request that he give us leave to buy the lands around the house of God that has been so ruinously defiled.’

Eight talents. Eight talents?

It was not given to speak in the presence of the king without express invitation, but the intake of breath sucked at the theatre walls with its gale.

Eight talents was a room’s worth of gold. A river. An ocean. For the worth of eight talents, a man could buy every camel in the east and its progeny and its progeny’s progeny for the next ten generations. If Ibrahim and his brothers had earned so much as a single talent of gold, they would have retired to their Saba villages and bought themselves as many Saba wives as they wanted, each one preparing pickled calves’ intestines for the rest of their idle lives.

Even in Caesarea, where men could spin money out of straw, Pantera doubted whether they made that much. Yusaf probably didn’t make a talent’s clear profit in a decade, although the balsam might have tipped the scales in that direction. Eight, though… eight would have bled the entire Hebrew population dry of every ounce of profit.

Yusaf rose stiffly to his feet and handed to his king a small scroll, the promissory note.

Agrippa took it, slowly, as he might have taken sacred texts for safe keeping. ‘Did I understand correctly: you wish to buy the land around the synagogue that you might hold it free of other buildings?’

‘We do.’

‘And if it is not for sale?’

‘We feel that any man will sell to his majesty, if he is offered a reasonable price.’

‘And with this, we could be reasonable.’

‘Immensely so.’

There were stirrings in the crowd, the first warnings of shouts to come, whatever the protocol of speaking in the royal presence, the first clenched muscles of beatings and stabbings, the first wave of the violence that threatened to crest the bulwarks of civility and break into bloodshed.

A voice murmured across the stage, too quiet for those in the seating to hear, even with the copper curtain. The king cocked his head and asked a soft question, equally inaudible to those beyond him. A woman’s voice rode over the answer, tuneful as a mountain spring. Its tone ended in dismissal. Bowing, Yusaf withdrew from the stage leaving the king alone on his pedestal.

Tension hung taut across the theatre. Nobody shouted yet, but the air was thick with waiting.

As if in answer, the king flung both his arms high. A cascade of high-toned silver bells rang from behind the bronze wall. On their signal, scarlet and saffron silks rained from its height to hang halfway down, casting the braziers in blood red.

Agrippa, set ablaze by the new light, brought both arms crashing down.

At which, every light within the theatre was doused; every torch, every lamp, every candle, snuffed before the king’s hands reached his sides. The radiant, many-coloured theatre was struck to utter darkness as surely as if the sun had been extinguished.

The men and women of Caesarea were seasoned theatregoers, not readily impressed by pyrotechnics or displays of deus ex machina, but they gasped aloud then, and again when a single man’s voice boomed from the stage out across the auditorium.

‘A king lives for ever in the eyes of God. Mere mortals rise and die, taking four legs in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening to stagger to their graves. Keep to your seats now, men of Caesarea, and witness such wonders as have never before been seen in the civilized world!’

‘Should we stay to watch the play?’ Pantera asked quietly.

‘We should,’ Menachem said. ‘Whether we wish to is another question. The riots will start now. This is not a safe place to be.’ He glanced sideways, past Pantera. ‘By happy chance, it would seem that we are near the end of a row which is near the door. If we were to depart now — a call of nature, perhaps, that must urgently be answered — it might be that we will not cause great offence.’

Outside, vast man-high torches shed good light all around the theatre. Pantera and Menachem walked together to the place where the light ended and the dark began. And with that dark, a crowd; the two thousand men — more — who had not gained entry to the theatre stood outside it, waiting to glean what news they could from inside. They were not happy, but none of them was young.

‘The youths aren’t here,’ Pantera said. ‘But these men are angry enough to wreak havoc on their own.’

‘Whatever we do now,’ Menachem said, ‘the fighting will start. Yusaf’s efforts were laudable, but we have to acknowledge that he has failed. Perhaps if Agrippa had taken the bribe at the moment of its offering… But we shall never know, now, what might have been.’ He held out his hand, the beginnings of a cautious friendship. ‘I leave for Jerusalem tonight. If you travel there, send me word. It can be a difficult place to enter if you are not known.’

‘I will remember.’ Pantera had been born in Jerusalem, but now did not seem the time to say so. He shook hands with the dangerous young man who faced him. ‘May your night pass in peace.’

Behind them, the theatre simmered to a boil. Noise leaked out like a great rushing tide, and the Watch stood back to let men and women flee from the coming violence.