The Coming of the King

Chapter Forty-Two

The mule was not only lame, but massively overburdened, or such was the assessment of Laelius, the harassed garrison guard on duty that Sabbath dusk at the small southernmost gate leading into Jerusalem. He and his gate partner, Bibulus, had watched for half an hour now as the unfortunate beast grew from an ant on the horizon to a full-grown gelding, plodding forward, ears flopping down to its muzzle.

A skinny Syrian trotted along behind, cursing and thrashing the beast with unnerving monotony: thump, thump, thump, once every third stride, just out of rhythm with the lameness. He didn’t even have the sense to beat the mule, but struck the left-hand pannier, giving forth with each stroke a pungency of garlic so thick and so strong he could have carved up the very air and sold it at market.

The Syrian did not consider that; he was as foolish as his mule, while the veiled and hooded woman who slumped astride it humming discordant Syrian lullabies was… vast. Overwhelming. Too huge to contemplate and certainly too big for the unfortunate beast that was forced to support her.

With awe in his voice, or disgust, Bibulus said, ‘She’s pregnant.’

Laelius felt his gorge rise as his mind supplied unwanted images of a skinny gap-toothed Syrian and his vast wife locked in the throes of coitus. They passed uncomfortably close. The Syrian smiled at him; his wife crooned her ditties. Among the garlic, Laelius caught an eye-watering stink of civet. The mule was definitely lame.

Neither guard made an effort to stop the pair; there had been no specific edict against men walking into the city at night, only about their leaving it.

Laelius held his breath until they had gone, then leaned in relief against the wall and took a long drink from the wine jug that was better company than Bibulus. He ached for the sound of Roman voices speaking Roman thoughts. He offered a prayer to Jupiter Dolichenos that the rumours were true and his legion might evacuate this godforsaken city before the full moon.

In Yusaf’s elegant house in the city, Kleopatra woke from dreams of death and cold and the awe of being Chosen when she had no idea what that meant or what to do. She lay muzzily on a pallet nursing the panic that had begun when Hypatia had named her, and only when her heart had stilled did she hear voices in the air around her, and her name, spoken twice in fast succession, once by a woman.

She opened her eyes and found that there was a mule in Yusaf’s beautiful dining room, which had become, perforce, her bedchamber, and a figure with black teeth who stank of garlic leaning back against the wall with his eyes shut, plainly too exhausted to stand much longer, and certainly beyond the care it might take to wash.

From the gloom of too few candles someone handed him a beaker and he drank as if it were the first water he had seen in months. Someone else tugged on the mule’s bridle and pulled it sideways. Something shimmered in the erratic light and there echoed about the small room a slither of metal on metal.

Kleopatra rubbed the back of her neck and rolled sideways, hunting for the few remnants of clothing that she doffed for sleep. She found her sandals first, functional as legionary caligae, then a leather belt with the shape of a horse at each of the tie-ends, and a comb for her hair.

She was sitting when the gap-toothed man noticed her, and he only did that because he had lifted a rag of wool with which to clean his face, and in dipping it in his water — or perhaps his wine — he happened to turn.

‘Kleopatra,’ he said, and bared his lips, the better to rub the candle-soot from his front teeth. ‘We were trying not to wake you.’

‘Pantera? Pantera! ’ She threw herself to her feet and might have hugged him, had he not been so filthy.

Instead, she stood close in the hazy light, taking in his presence, noting the weariness on his left side that was worse than it had been, the new lines about his eyes, carved by wind and sun, and the newly sharpened angles of his cheeks that spoke of long days without food and a pain that might haunt him still.

But all these were small things when he was manifestly alive, whole, healed, all the things Kleopatra had believed impossible when she had last seen him.

She dragged her eyes from him and looked around at piles of iron links that stole light from the candle to make a thousand flaming points, and lean, long swords, bare-bladed on the floor, and helmets, enough for a tent-party of eight… And Iksahra, sitting on the floor, with the cheetah draped about her ankles.

She was no longer dreaming, but reality was stranger than she had imagined. Stooping, Kleopatra ran a hand over the armour on the floor; shining, serpentine links, enough to equip half a dozen men.

‘You took Masada?’ Hypatia had told her they planned it, in the days when Hypatia was still free to speak to her.

From behind, Pantera said, ‘Two days ago. We will take Jerusalem in the morning.’

Kleopatra spun back to face him. ‘What was the message? The one that Iksahra’s falcon caught. Could you read it?’

‘I could.’

‘What then? What did it say?’

‘Gideon will tell you.’ Pantera caught her eye and directed her attention towards the uncandled shadows on the room’s far side where a shape detached itself from the dark and Gideon the Peacemaker stood before her, looking older than he had in the council chamber, as if the night had stolen years from him.

He answered her question in a voice in which grief and rage measured every word. ‘The message was from Ishmael, the dove-keeper in Caesarea. It came with news that his city is a bloodbath. Twenty thousand are dead; every Hebrew in the city, down to the last child, has been killed by the city Watch. Saulos ordered it.’

Kleopatra covered her mouth with her hands. ‘Jucundus,’ she said, faintly. ‘He wouldn’t…’

Pantera said, ‘He wasn’t there.’

‘He tried to tell me what had happened. I didn’t listen.’ Kleopatra closed her eyes and then opened them again; against all probability, the bloody gallery of her mind was worse than the horror etched across Gideon’s face, the pain, as if he had seen the acts himself.

Quietly, Pantera said, ‘We will not sue for peace now. We must fight and win, else Jerusalem will wade thigh-deep in the blood of innocence. And we must do it soon, before the legions march from Syria.’

Kleopatra could not look at either man. Instead, she looked down again at Iksahra, and at the piles of chain mail shirts that surrounded her. ‘How did you get these in?’ she asked. ‘All the gates are watched.’

‘On the mule.’ Pantera shrugged, as if it was an easy thing. ‘The blades and helms were in one of the panniers. Iksahra wore the shirts bunched about her body. The guard thought…’

With a wry grin, he glanced at Iksahra, who ghosted a shadow of Pantera’s smile and said, ‘We choose not to imagine what he thought. But he did not search us.’

‘And the cat?’

‘The cat was in the other pannier, on the right-hand side. It will forgive me eventually, particularly if we fight in the night.’

The cat had come to tolerate Kleopatra, if not to like her; she could come near it now and it did not harden its eyes.

She reached past its head and lifted a mail shirt from the nearest pile. She had seen them often worn by the guards in Caesarea and Jerusalem, but never held one. It rippled across her hands like sharkskin.

‘How many did you bring?’ she asked.

Iksahra said, ‘Nine. Mergus is coming later with some men, but he won’t need all of them. We think that one will fit you.’

‘Me?’ She spread it out, looking at the width between the shoulders, at the length. ‘It could-’

Pantera was ahead of her. ‘Iksahra, no! We spoke of this.’ He caught Kleopatra’s arm, drawing her towards him. ‘You should come with me to the encampment, or at the very worst stay here until the fighting is over. Nothing else is safe.’

‘So you say, and yet Kleopatra of Caesarea has killed once already in my sight. She has, I think, practised with the sword more than any other member of her family.’ Iksahra stooped, scooping a blade from the floor, and passed it, hilt first, to Kleopatra. ‘Is he right? Must you be kept safe with men about you for protection while we open the city’s gates from the inside to let in Menachem’s army?’

In a clear invitation, Iksahra lifted a blade of similar length and held it out, as men will who offer a fight to another.

Kleopatra took a step away from Pantera. The blade she had been given was fine, well balanced, a little shorter than the cavalry blades Jucundus had given her to practise with, but she swung it once, twice, and found that point of harmony where the end of her elbow became the true end of the blade, so that its killing edges were a part of her arm, and she could defend without thinking. Or attack.

She swept a strike at Iksahra’s head. The other woman swung her sword up in a block that hurt all the way down Kleopatra’s arm to her feet, but she let the power of it throw her own blade out and round and down, cutting for Iksahra’s ankles. The second block was faster, but she was ready for it, and already moving, twisting, angling sideways and up and through and… so close, but not close enough; Iksahra was faster, sharper, harder and continued to be so for a spray of strikes, again and again, and again, until the world was a whirl of iron and Kleopatra’s sword arm was numb from the impact.

She sprang back, breathing hard, and held her blade high above her head in surrender. ‘How are we going to open the gates?’ she asked.

‘By stealth, for the most part.’ Iksahra lowered her own sword. ‘We have to remove the guards in such a way that they don’t alert their brethren to the possibility of attack.’

‘Are we alone? We two?’

‘No. Mergus will bring five men into the city as soon as Pantera has left, in case we need to attack. Gideon goes with Pantera.’

‘Gideon is invited to go with me,’ Pantera said. As his gaze sought the Peacemaker, there was a challenge in it that Kleopatra did not understand. ‘Does he wish to accept?’

‘I do.’ Gideon laid both hands on his chest. ‘Before God, I will do whatever may be done to aid Menachem. I have not done so in the past, but the bloodshed at Caesarea changes everything.’

‘In that case, we’ll need to make you as large as Iksahra was with her mail shirts. If necessary, we’ll cut up some of Yusaf’s bedding rolls.’ Pantera shifted his gaze to Iksahra. To her he said, ‘It’s not too late to change your mind. I could still take you and Kleopatra to safety outside the walls.’

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.’