The Coming of the King

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saulos’ visitor came so deep in the night that the stars barely gave him light to find his way.

Iksahra was asleep in the stables when she heard a shoulder brush along the oak fence that separated the beast garden from the city. She was there to care for a sick horse, or so she had told Polyphemos. In truth, she was tired of the old air in Herod’s palace and of the scurry of nervous slaves that filled it night and day. Sleep came more easily among the beasts, who welcomed her presence and didn’t make signs behind their backs to ward off evil every time she passed them by.

And so she slept in the straw, lightly, as a hunter sleeps, with the cheetah at her side, and when she heard footsteps outside the big cat rose with her and together they tracked the maybe-intruder by sound as he scuffed along the dust on the far side of the fence towards the palace.

She couldn’t unlock the gate without being seen and the fence was too high to climb, but the gods smiled and the interloper stopped at the end of the fence where flamelight from the palace torches spilled bright across the ground, sending a solitary shadow sliding under the fence.

The stranger had picked his time well; by Iksahra’s estimate, he had a quarter-hour to do what he needed before the guards who made their circuits of the palace were likely to return. She watched his shadow shift and shift and then stop beneath Saulos’ chamber.

It took a cool mind and a careful arm to throw a pebble up four storeys and hit the shutters that covered Saulos’ window. Iksahra was impressed by the stranger’s accuracy. Time after time after time — five in all — he threw his pebbles and hit the centre of his target.

On the fifth stone, the shutters opened and Saulos’ round, white face showed moon-like in the dark window. He looked out and down, waved a white kerchief three times and withdrew. His visitor gave a grunt of satisfaction and began to make his way back along the fence.

Iksahra followed until she reached the cheetah’s empty cage and slid in behind it, keeping her head low.

Saulos passed the hound kennels; they caught his scent and stirred restlessly. The horses shifted in their stalls and a mongoose chattered alone in its pit. Unheeding, Saulos walked on through the garden, towards the dungheap at the back.

With half a hundred different animals emptying their bowels through the day and all of it dumped in that pit, the stench was ripe, and the rats sleek. Saulos did not go all the way up to the barriers that bounded the pit, but stepped to one side at the last moment and pressed his head sideways to the oak fence.

A knot hole pierced the wood there, wide as a man’s bent thumb. When she first came, Iksahra had seen the faint shimmer of grease around it from faces pressed to the oak and had thought it a trysting place for lovers. Perhaps it was; certainly Saulos and his visitor had used it before.

Saulos knocked on the wood three times in simple rhythm. A knock came back, and a hoarse whisper. ‘Who is the third son of David?’

‘Absolom is third son of David. Are you he? Or his emissary?’

‘It’s me. No one else is to be trusted this close to the end. I bring news that the Egyptian witch is in Pantera’s pay.’

‘Is she? And young Kleopatra so smitten with her. How immensely unfortunate. Thank you.’

It was not a secret: Saulos had told Iksahra the same before they left her people. Which meant that he kept his spies in the dark and let them tell him what he already knew; it fitted with the kind of man she had seen him to be.

On the other side of the fence, the voice said, ‘There’s more. Tonight, the War Party and the Peace Party met together under one roof for the first time. Pantera was there. He plans your death.’

‘Of course he does.’ Saulos sounded amused, in so far as a whisper could impart feeling. ‘He is, after all, a worthy adversary. Remember that, my friend; if you are going to fight a mortal battle, fight it with someone you respect, however much you hate them. Victory is sweeter that way. What does he plan?’

‘He personally will denounce you tomorrow in front of all Jerusalem as an enemy of Judaea.’

‘And you think he’ll succeed?’

‘I am afraid of it. More than that, I am afraid he is right. Are you an enemy of Judaea?’

‘I am an enemy of those who would destroy her with their petty squabbles. I will restore her to glory.’

‘Under Rome?’

‘Of course under Rome. But as an equal partner in the Kingdom of God. You know this. My friend…’ Saulos placed his flat palm against the fence and leaned his cheek on it. His voice was warm with care and reason. ‘We have talked of this so many times, over so many years. How can you doubt me now, when we are so close?’

‘How can I not? They say you will destroy Jerusalem.’

‘And so you come here in person to find the truth, as is fitting. I taught you to doubt even the hand in front of your face, did God not show it you first.’ Saulos pressed his cheek to the fence.

‘Jerusalem will fall, but she will rise again by God’s hand. The Kingdom cannot be built but out of the rubble of what has been. When the time comes, tell that to those you command.’

‘And what do I tell them of the women? They speak already of the witch, and the beastwoman who is more demon than witch, and they know that you consort openly with both of these.’

‘But not for long. You know — who better? — that in pursuit of our goals we must pretend to be that which we are not. Trust me in this, neither the witch nor Iksahra has turned the course of my heart. They serve their purpose, which is my purpose, but when their use is done they will join Pantera in Hades. We can do this, except only if you doubt me; faith is everything and without yours I am nothing.’

A silence came from the far side of the fence, a waiting, and then, ‘My faith is as it has always been. And my trust in you.’

‘And mine in you. Go back whence you came, my friend. Sleep and know your warning fell on fruitful ground. Tomorrow, Jerusalem will begin to die, that you and I may raise it living from its own ashes.’

The visitor left then, his footsteps fading into the black night. Iksahra laid a hand on the cheetah’s broad brow and another under its chin and held its mouth still until Saulos had walked past and let himself out of the garden, back into the palace.

Then she breathed in the scent of the cat, of the horses, of the hounds, of the night, and considered her hatred of Judaea and her contempt for Rome and how, exactly, these were outweighed by her utter loathing of Saulos the Herodian, snake in the night, who must pretend to be what he was not, yet was blind to those around him who did the same.