The Eagle of the Twelfth

Chapter Thirty

The Eagle of the Twelfth caught the late afternoon sun, magnified it and spilled it down as if from heaven upon the head of Pantera’s enemy, Eleazir, who carried it aloft.

It bathed with fainter light the twelve priests of the Hebrew god who paced behind him in their costly silks, with tablets of onyx and gold upon their breasts and crowns of barely smaller wealth upon their heads.

It reached only faintly the first few layers of the vast crowd that surged and billowed around the procession. By their hundreds of thousands they wailed their grief, but did it softly, for they felt the tension in the air, the threat of violence, as keenly as those of us who had been on the hill’s top these past hours.

That tension surged up to us in roiling waves. It rebounded off the pale rock wall behind us and fell back through the rows of almonds and of olives, the many-coloured flowers and the camphire at the path’s edge, the thorn bushes under which Horgias and I crouched with our eyes to the gaps, seeing down as far as we could while tied at wrist and ankle.

It settled on the body of the man the crowds had cometo mourn, the shrouded, anointed body of Menachem ben Yehuda, late king of Israel, who lay on a bier in front of a cave-tomb carved into the rock with his crown on his chest, a trophy for whomsoever had the courage and the wit to take it.

So focused was I on the parade, on the king, that I did not hear the sound of approaching steps. And so it seemed it was as if from nowhere that a woman’s voice said, ‘I am Hypatia, Chosen of Isis. You are Demalion of Macedonia, last of the Twelfth. Who is it that holds your heart, for whom you grieve with such passion?’

I spun, as fast as a bound man might, and saw the white-robed oracle woman, a vision of black hair and iron-grey eyes, sharp enough to slice open a man’s soul. Her face was the epitome of a woman’s perfection: smooth-skinned, high-browed, with a nose that would have roused Cleopatra to envy. Even now, in the heat of the afternoon, with dust on her head and runnels of sweat pooling at her collarbones, she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I thought of Syrion, imagined what he would have given to have met her, and didn’t know whether to weep or to laugh until some sword ended my noise.

I did neither; duty held me still. After a moment, when the woman had not moved, I answered her question. ‘His name was Heraclides. We called him Tears.’

‘Tears?’ Her eyes remained open, but, with a shudder, I saw her mind go elsewhere, leaving me in the presence of a living spectre.

Presently, returning, she said, ‘He was killed, was he not, in the last moments of battle, after you slew our king, but before you were captured?’

I nodded. She made my skin twitch, this woman, and stole the breath from my throat.

She said, ‘He waits for you, but you know that. What perhaps you do not know is that he waits in a place outside time. There is no need to rush to him. He will be there when you are ready and will not know if years have passed or an eye’s blink.’

I did not say I am ready now, but I may as well have done, for I saw her shake her head and shrug her shoulders and make ready to rise.

‘If Pantera has his way,’ she said, ‘if he can sweep Eleazir aside and put Gideon on the throne, with himself the power behind it, he will send you back to Rome with your Eagle as a gesture of our goodwill to the emperor. If Eleazir holds the day, you will not be able to lay hands on the Eagle while it remains in Jerusalem. I tell you this as a truth, not a threat. Think, as you plan your vengeance: what is it that really matters to you?’

She left before I could answer, taking with her memories of Tears that shrouded her like a living veil. In her absence, he did not return to me, however much I begged in the darkness of my mind.

Heartsick, I watched her walk across the small plateau towards the cave-tomb to join the men who waited there. Pantera stood at their head, and now I knew what to look for I saw the signs of exhaustion: his left leg dragged more than on the battlefield, his right shoulder stooped further. I rejoiced at these, watched each one as a wolf watches a wounded bear, savoured them as if the victories they commemorated were mine.

Gideon was with him, the deep-voiced high priest who was their best choice as the next king, and Mergus, centurion of the XXth who fought against the legions. Estaph, the giant Parthian axeman, stood by, and a handful of Hebrews whose names I had not yet found out, who had been sworn shield-men of the king and remained now all around him, exceptat the front, where he must remain visible to the ascending crowds.

They all deferred to Hypatia, Chosen of Isis, oracle to kings, who walked amongst them as if she had the same powers as a man; more, even, for although I had not once that day heard her say ‘I told you he would die’, I had heard three men say of her that she had prophesied Menachem’s death on the battlefield, and he, hearing her, had chosen to risk the fray and let his god protect him.

And he had failed.

My god, Helios, had proved the stronger.

Ha!

Satisfaction kept me watching through the gap in the thorns and listening as, together, Hypatia and Pantera made a last effort to persuade the still reluctant Gideon to take his nation’s crown.

He did not want it; that much had been clear on the ride back from the battlefield, when it had become plain, too, that Eleazir had taken Hypatia’s word as truth and, expecting his cousin’s death, had held his own men back from the battle, so that by now his followers outnumbered Pantera’s faction by four or five to one.

Everything I heard about Eleazir portrayed him as a giant of a man.

‘Eleazir will destroy Judaea. He wants nothing more than war with Rome.’

‘Eleazir will open the gates to Vologases within a half-month. He will make Judaea a client kingdom of Parthia, and then Nero will be forced to send in the legions. We will not have the power to stop him.’

‘Eleazir kills men by slow degrees for the pleasure of it; he’s not fit to rule Jerusalem, still less the whole of Judaea and Galilee.’

‘Eleazir could have led the charge today, but he had heardthe prophecy and chose not to. Do you want a coward as your king?’

This last stung an answer from Gideon. ‘I don’t want a coward to take the throne, nor one who revels in the pain of others, but I am no more courageous than Eleazir, nor do I have better strategies. The only point in my favour is that I am committed to building a peace with Rome, and there are few left after today who will see that as a benefit. Perhaps if Queen Berenice were to return we might-’

Pantera cut him off brusquely. ‘The queen is safe in Alexandria with Iksahra and Kleopatra. She may return when we’re sure there is no risk of attack, but for that we need you to be on the throne.’

‘Berenice will return to be queen of her land, but not until Eleazir is dead. Menachem trusted you. In that is your strength. If the people will accept you, will you not give them the leadership they need?’

So spoke Hypatia of Alexandria, Chosen of Isis. To listen to her was like listening to water flow in a desert, if water had the power of prophecy, if it could turn the day cold and cause the sky to shimmer with the numbers of listening dead. I would have found it hard to argue against her: what man wants to argue with a woman who can foresee death?

Certainly not Gideon, for I heard him say, ‘Very well. If the people will accept me, I will take the crown.’

Thus did Gideon ally himself to Pantera and in doing so became my enemy, just as Eleazir, enemy of my enemy, was my friend.

Soon after this exchange, I had an idea — a gift from Tears, I am sure — of how we who were left of the XIIth legion might yet destroy Pantera and all he stood for.

I shuffled back from my viewing gap and turned a little, so that I came to rest with my bound legs behind Horgias. It took only moments for him to understand what was needed, although the execution took nearly an hour. We had time, though. We had plenty of time.

Eleazir and his men brought the Eagle up the long hill slowly. They were hampered at first by the shifting, grieving crowd, but there came a point near the place where the nut trees ended and gave way to tended gardens, when the air of incipient violence caused movement to falter; when the men, women and children ceased to throw flowers and lay down palm leaves and simply waited, and looked up to their fallen king with tear-washed faces. Thereafter, the procession was able to move more swiftly, unexpectedly so, and I found myself struggling to kneel, that I might not be caught unawares when the clash came, as it must. At my side, I felt Horgias do the same. Together, we saw Eleazir for the first time as he stepped up on to the plateau at the head of his men.

He was not a giant of a man, for all that he was clearly kin to the dead king; they shared a lean face, dark hair, strong brows, and clear, if sunken, cheeks. But Eleazir was the lesser in all ways; slighter, with a narrower visage, so that thin brows made flapping gull’s wings over a nose that was too narrow to be noble.

Even so, he was not a man to face lightly. He walked as a lion walks, watching its prey, and although he bore no visible weapons I would have bet my life that he had knives strapped on to the inner parts of both arms, for that is the only reason I have ever seen a man hold himself the way he did, as if the touch of his arms might taint his body.

And he was angry; if ever a man seemed bent on battle, my friend Eleazir was that man.

He stood almost alone on the summit: Pantera and his small group had moved back to stand in the dark mouth of the cave-tomb, shaded from the sun and invisible to the mourning masses. They had the look of men waiting inambush who do not know how long they might have to wait; relaxed, but sharply vigilant.

Gideon, high priest of Israel, remained alone to stand clearly beside the body of his fallen lord, his white robes dyed a dozen shades of saffron and citrus by the sinking sun.

Alone, he stepped up to meet Eleazir and the lesser priests.

Alone, he spoke the words in Hebrew that sent the dead king to his god, although I knew, because I had seen it on the battlefield, that Menachem had already crossed to the lands of the dead and met whatever judgement awaited him.

Gideon it was who roused the people to bid one last farewell to their king. Menachem lay flat, with gold coins on his eyes, and his arms at his sides, for the Hebrews think it sacrilege to cross a man’s arms over his chest as we do, sometimes, in death.

His sword lay at one side and his knife at the other and in the centre, on his chest, lay the filet of gold that had encircled his helmet as his crown.

On possession of that thin gold wire now rested the fate of a nation.

I saw Pantera move, I think, before anyone else; I had kept him in my line of sight so that when he stepped out of the shadows and lifted the thin gold crown I was ready, pushing myself up from my knees, slowly, hidden by the thorns.

The binding cords dropped away from my wrists and ankles. That was the gift Tears had sent me: the understanding that, although neither Horgias nor I could free ourselves, each could free the other while everyone’s attention was elsewhere.

We had no plan, no weapons, nowhere to go but down the hill, and there awaited a hundred thousand enemies, but I was ready even as Pantera raised the filet of understated gold and held it high over Gideon’s head so that it must seem tothe crowds as if the crown had appeared from nowhere and was choosing its rightful owner.

‘ People of Israel! ’

His voice boomed out, louder than any normal man’s, and I saw that he had turned his head and was using the echo of the cave, and thought that Hypatia had set him to do that.

‘See now your rightful-’

Eleazir’s knife flew after I moved. To the end of my days, I will swear that: no man can move faster than a thrown knife and I reached Gideon before the blade took his throat, so I must have been moving first.

In a tangle of limbs and oaths, we tumbled together on to the raw earth, leaving Pantera, who stood behind Gideon, as the hurtling knife’s new target.

He dodged. The knife missed, and clattered in the back of the cave-tomb. As I freed myself from Gideon’s flailing limbs, I saw Horgias dive towards it.

I had no time to look for him; I was caught in the midst of a fight, unarmed and unarmoured, with Pantera on my left and Eleazir on my right.

The crown lay on the dirt between us. All three of us launched ourselves at it, clawing and grasping, fighting like curs over a bone, while all around us was pandemonium.

Gideon fell beside me, caught by another thrown knife. He died gasping, with blood foaming from his mouth and throat.

I ignored him. Two things mattered: the crown and the Eagle. Scrabbling, clawing, reaching, my fingers found the first of these, wrapped triumphant round the thin, cold wire ‘Demalion!’ Horgias grabbed my shoulders. ‘The Eagle!’

I rolled to my feet. Somebody dragged the crown from my hand, but my attention was all on the Eagle, twenty paces away and retreating, protected by eight of Eleazir’s men.

Around us, Pantera’s few were using their advantage of height to good effect, but from below another fifty of Eleazir’s men were running up to overwhelm them while the Eagle was heading downhill to the safety of the crowd.

I spun, and came up against Pantera’s sword, jabbed at my face.

‘Leave it. There are too many of them.’

‘For you maybe, but-’

‘For anybody.’ His sword fell. ‘There’s a route out at the back of the cave. If you stay here, you’re dead men.’ And he was gone, shouting in Aramaic to men who lifted the body of the king.

I looked at Horgias. I looked at the Eagle, which was thirty paces away and might as well have been a thousand. I looked at Eleazir’s men, at the hate on their faces: they didn’t know that we were the enemies of their enemy and therefore their friends; nor did they care.

We had two choices that were only one real choice. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder at the Eagle. ‘We can’t get it back if we’re dead,’ I said.

We ran.

I rode a Berber colt in the fighting retreat from Jerusalem and hated every silken stride.

He was younger than the mare, and more skittish, an iron grey rather than the full white of age; her son, perhaps, or a distant cousin. Sharp and wary of combat, he jilted and napped and kicked and bolted so that only the horsemanship of the woman Hypatia behind me kept him facing in the right direction and kept us both upright, and unscathed.

I could have held him. I could have ridden him better, but I sat before her, as children are seated, or captive women, and the shame broke my heart.

Pantera rode behind us, last of the line, holding Menachemin front of him on his milk-white mare, for if they had lost the Eagle and the kingdom they still had the dead man, and would not leave him behind, however much he hampered our escape.

Pantera bore the bow I had dropped and my quiver with nine arrows remaining and he used all nine in our flight and others that were brought him, firing back over his saddle in the way of the Parthian bowmen.

In spite of myself, I skewed round to watch and saw him hit at least two out of three that he aimed for and in the end this must have caused our pursuers to drop back because we reached our destination at a walk, unchallenged, with only the old moon rising to show us what we faced.

It was as well, I think, for by then we were exhausted and parched and light-headed for hunger. To have seen in full daylight the jagged mountains that reared high above the desert, to have understood what we must climb — that would have finished us.

As it was, we followed Mergus, the wiry centurion, as he dismounted and led his horse along a winding path in the semi-dark and it was enough to see the horse in front, to keep in line as he climbed an ever steepening gully with a fall on either side. They cut our bonds partway up that we could hold our balance, and there was no risk to it; by then we were beyond all thoughts of escape.

The way was harsh and hard and we trudged it as men in a nightmare, not knowing where we were going or why.

At the top, the path opened out into a kind of cleft, a valley of sorts, surrounded on three sides by rock and on the fourth by a makeshift wall of rock rubble piled up to keep men from blundering over the edge in the dark.

There were signs of others here before us: fist-sized stones set in rings for fires; a stinking area to the east that had been used as a latrine not long ago; steps cut in the mountain rockleading up to sentry points. Half of Pantera’s men went to these now, unasked, to keep watch back down the way we had come.

Horgias and I were given water and food and lay down behind a rock and slept fitfully, to busy, blood-filled dreams.