The Coming of the King

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘ We are not yet ready. Pass it on. Tell everyone, of any party; Menachem says we are not ready for war.’

Menachem was a man transformed. His eyes were alight with a blackening fire that scorched the men on whom it fell. His voice rang with authority, his smile was bright and sharp and his men lived for the touch of his words, so that when he had said for the tenth, the thirtieth time, Not yet. We are not ready for war, they let go their stones and their staves, and paused in their screaming of insults long enough for his message to pass unchanged down the lines of command, dimming the mob’s hysteria, bringing order in the chaos, not only among his own men, but among the Peace Party, too.

Nobody spoke for peace now, not even Gideon, just that they were not yet ready for war. Even the men of Eleazir’s faction of the War Party, those who lived for war yesterday, or war today, or war tomorrow at the latest, accepted Menachem’s edict and were subdued.

Trapped in the midst of the chaos, Mergus saw the men around him pause for breath, but not shout again. He caught Estaph’s arm.

‘They’ve taken Pantera to the beast garden at the back. There’s a wooden palisade around it. There must be a way in.’

‘If not, we will make one.’ Estaph’s axes hung at his belt. He was not smiling now, had not smiled since the night when Pantera had said what he planned. His big, broad face was pinched below the cheekbones, thumbed in below the eyes. ‘What once we’re in?’

Mergus said, ‘We create a distraction: start a fire, kill some men, do whatever we need to get the attention of the Guard and then we hope that Hyp-’

‘Mergus, you can’t.’

Menachem’s voice came from behind him, still ripe with the power of leadership. Mergus turned. ‘I didn’t ask your permission. We will do what it takes to get him out. You have no right to hinder us.’

‘I know. And I know what he is to you, and what he has done for us. But do you not think we have lost men we loved as deeply to that cage? From the time of my grandfather’s father, men have died in there whom we loved, and I swear to you, we have done everything we could think of to free them, and when they could not be freed, we have done everything we could think of to end their agony. We have failed. If you try to do the same now for Pantera, you will die with him. As you said, I cannot stop you, but I can ask if your deaths will help him. I don’t believe they will.’

‘But we have an advantage,’ Mergus said. ‘Hypatia is in the palace and she does not want him dead. Is there a way she might get them both out?’

Menachem took his time to consider. At length, he said, ‘There’s a gate in the beast garden palisade that leads out into the Upper Market. The slaves use it for the beast dung. It is the least guarded of the gates, though closest to the man-cage. If Hypatia reaches it, and if there were men waiting on the outside able to hamper those who followed her, she could perhaps reach freedom.’ He gave a tight, smile. ‘We never had anybody inside who might help.’

‘Will you take us to the gate?’ Estaph asked.

‘I will take you, and I will leave Aaron with you, who grew to boyhood in the market. If Hypatia reaches you, with or without Pantera, he will take you all to safety. In this, there is hope.’

Pantera had no hope, but at least a degree of respite while Gessius Florus, the peevish, frustrated, uncertain governor of all Judaea, held on to Saulos’ arm, and insisted on being heard.

‘I have not my lord Saulos’ extensive experience, but in the past, when I have had cause to question a man, we have on occasion allowed him breath to speak.’

The governor was doing his best to exert his authority, but Saulos wasn’t listening any more than was Pantera. They were dancing together, or at least he, Pantera, was responding to every move that Saulos made and Saulos was moving in a continuous slow rhythm, lazy and graceless as ever, but entirely effective: he didn’t have to work hard to ensure that Pantera couldn’t speak in Florus’ presence.

And yet, the next blow was late. Florus spoke and Saulos did not swing the lead and Pantera had time to study the governor’s toga, with its thin purple band at the hem, to smell the governor’s sour sweat and to register surprise that he could smell anything beyond the vomit — and lately the urine — that puddled beneath him.

His feet had long since left the floor, but nothing had broken yet; not the bones of his arms, not the strings of his shoulders, not his ribs, not anywhere that might lead to bloodshed and an early death. Even so, his body was a single, searing point of pain. Had he breath, his screams would have reached the palace, but he had no breath. He heard Saulos answer Florus from a thick, unreachable place, beyond the wall of his misery.

‘There is no need to let him speak yet. He won’t say anything of benefit.’

‘You know him?’

‘I know his kind. They break slowly, over hours and days, not early, at the first hints of discomfort.’

‘But the men say he’s a Roman citizen. If it is true, both you and I will suffer for this.’

‘It is not true.’

Pantera dared not open his eyes. Saulos was facing him, talking to Florus as if he were an inconvenience, which he was. But he had not lifted his hand again, had not begun his dance afresh. Pantera knew the changes in the air when it happened; already his body cringed away from them as a trained animal from the lash. Now there had been a dozen heartbeats without. He took the first part of a clear breath and was pathetically grateful.

An arm’s reach away, Florus was still speaking. ‘I am told he carries the emperor’s ring. The turquoise with the lyre and the chariot engraved thereon.’

‘A forgery,’ Saulos said. He raised his right hand… and dropped it again into the palm of the left. Pantera sucked in another part of a breath.

‘Let me see it. My wife has the ring’s companion, made at the same time by the same jewelsmith in Athens. There are making-marks that cannot be counterfeited. I will know them.’

‘The ring has gone. It was lost in the crowd.’

‘It is in the folds of my tunic which lies on the floor. It is real.’ Pantera squandered his precious breath sending his voice as far as he could, which was not far.

It earned him another blow from Saulos’ leaded fist, but Florus had heard him. Knowing that was enough to keep Pantera’s feet on the floor and a part of him was amazed afresh at how so small a measure of hope could change the tenor of things.

‘I will see the ring,’ Florus said. ‘I will not be undone in this. If this man is talking truth, he may not be used to set a precedent. When once a citizen is hung thus, any one of us might follow. I will see the ring.’

A sweating hand reached past Pantera for the tunic that lay near his feet. He retched afresh at the imagined pain and then the hand was gone, and the ring with it; a kingfisher flash before his eyes. Somewhere, something whimpered like a beaten infant. He realized it was himself, and that if he had air to make noise, then…

‘Send a message-bird to the emperor. Ask him who speaks the tru-’ Saulos’ fist slammed the words away. He struck twice this time, first in the diaphragm, in the centre of the flowering bruise, second to Pantera’s nose, so that blood sluiced like a waterfall, and one more way of breathing was lost.

In the hell that followed, Pantera heard Florus shout a command to the men who stood guard over them.

‘The ring is real,’ said Florus, when he returned. ‘As he says, we should send a message to the emperor. He will know who is speaking the truth.’

Saulos laughed. ‘We would lose six days waiting for a dove to reach Rome and a reply to get back.’

‘He has the emperor’s ring.’

‘It was stolen.’

‘From the emperor’s jewel chests? Just this one among the many hundreds our lord has been given as proof of his people’s love for him? Or are you telling me that this man stole as many as he could carry and then gave them away and chose to live in penury in Jerusalem, bearing just this one as a keepsake? A moment ago, it did not exist. Now it exists and it is real. Therefore his story is real.’

‘It is not, and he will tell you himself and then you will tell the king and the High Priest and it will be established beyond doubt that we have questioned not a Roman citizen, but a fraud. If we release this man, and allow him to take ship for Rome, what tales do you imagine he will carry to the emperor? You have just ordered fifteen talents of gold to be taken from the Temple. It was done in your name. If you wish the emperor to know of it, you have only to say and I will, indeed, send a dove…’

Florus’ mouth flapped, uselessly. Saulos snapped his fingers. Two of the guards came forward slowly, burdened by weight. Over the baked noon air, Pantera smelled fire and hot iron. He would have vomited afresh, had he breath left to do it.

The men deposited their load and stepped back into their line. Saulos pumped the small hand bellows and the heat became a fire’s heat, and close, so that Pantera’s skin blistered.

Saulos lifted the first of the irons. ‘You asked that this man be given breath to speak. He has that breath. He has spoken his lies. Let him now speak the truth for you to hear it. He will tell you that he stole the ring, and that he is the bastard son of a Syrian archer, that he plans insurrection against Rome, that he is in league with the War Party and has met often with Menachem who leads them. And then he will lose his tongue, for we shall have no further use for it.’