Rome 2: The Coming of the King (21 page)

‘Then I’ll find a guide I can trust. Thank you for your advice.’

‘I’ll be your guide. You can’t trust anyone else.’ Kleopatra came closer, a step at a time, punctuating each short, sure phrase. ‘I was born here. I’ve spent half my life exploring the Jerusalem markets. And I know where the herbs are sold. There isn’t anything you want in the Upper Market, you need to go into the lower city. I can show you the way.’

It was still possible to send her back. The Chosen of Isis had had command of armies in the past, and of their commanders in the nearer times, but … but … There are days in life where each moment passes and is remarkable in its own right, but not particular. Then, occasionally, there comes a day when a particular moment holds the key to different futures, and the gods hold their breath upon its turning.

Hypatia studied the girl who stood before her, whose dark hair mirrored her own, whose high, smooth brow was exactly that of the queen, whose stormy eyes belonged to nobody but herself. The black dots at their centres were small now, and of equal diameter, which they had not been in the night.

And so a choice was made. ‘Come then,’ said Hypatia, and the gods breathed again. ‘Keep close to me. Your family’s not well liked and news of Caesarea’s riots will have spread with the dawn. If the merchants come to know who you are …’

‘They won’t.’

‘To be certain, we will say that I am a Greek woman seeking herbs for her husband and you are my niece. Speak Greek unless I say otherwise. Lead me to the herb-sellers, but not directly. Saulos will have set someone to follow us.’

THUS IT WAS
that Hypatia discovered the hills, the valleys, the sacred pools, the riotously loud markets, the quiet places of worship, the narrow lanes and dark, hidden alleyways of Jerusalem not in pleasurable solitude but in the company of a fourteen-year-old girl. The early surprise was that she found herself not at all unhappy with the exchange.

Passing swiftly through the Upper Market, Kleopatra showed an easy familiarity with the city’s angular back streets and blossomed in the role of leader and guide. She led at a fast pace, taking random turns to left and right, up slopes, down hills, a sharp back-turn here, a long, lazy arc there, keeping always in the shade, so that whoever was behind them – there was someone, Hypatia could feel a presence and thought she knew who it was – could not readily follow.

They passed down steep alleys and along streets where the mud-brick houses reached four storeys or more and leaned over almost to touch one another above the street. They passed through small, open squares where the sun flooded in, and lit the bricks to gold. In Rome or Corinth or Caesarea, they would have housed a fountain in the shape of a dolphin or a satyr.
Here they played host to a stall where a woman or a girl or a youth sold melons, or dates, or peaches.

Elsewhere, they skirted round courtyards in which middle-aged men in dark robes sat in a semicircle and debated points of law and religion, and in between all of these, in the markets that clogged every free area, they threaded through throngs of men, women and children, who eyed them with a degree of loathing Hypatia had rarely encountered.

Kleopatra ignored them all; her clear Greek etched out the architecture and the politics, but not the immediate press of people.

‘This street leads to the Temple. Only priests live here, but you can tell who’s out of favour, for those close with the High Priest have the north side, sheltered from the sun, and those he hates are moved to the south side, and bake through the day.

‘Over there is the street of the knife-grinders. The priests buy most of them; they kill a million lambs for the Passover so they need dozens of knives and replace them monthly.

‘That’s the Hasmonean palace. Would you not want to live there, with all those beautiful round towers, rather than the square edges of my great-grandfather’s?

‘This is the lower city. The best markets are here. To your left are the silk merchants. Did you ever see colours like that?’

‘In Alexandria, possibly.’ Hypatia turned slowly, looking about. No one was behind, and had not been for the past three blocks. ‘But not so many in one place. Alexandria has one great market spread over acres of land, not dozens of small, close stalls cramped into a hundred different markets as you have here.’

‘I’ve never been anywhere except here and Caesarea.’ Kleopatra had lost the imperious stance of the palace steps. Here, her face was wide with a child’s curiosity. ‘Tell me about Alexandria. No – just tell me about Isis. Tell me where you trained as the Chosen, what you did, all of it.’

‘I can’t tell you all of it. About some parts, I am sworn to secrecy.’

‘Tell me what you can.’

It wasn’t possible to give a lifetime’s teaching in an afternoon, but it was still a day for god-held moments, not to be ignored. Hypatia let the god guide her voice and Kleopatra, listening, asked intelligent questions that led the conversation along unexpected avenues, so that by the time they reached the far edge of the lower city Hypatia had agreed to take her to the Oracle of the Sibyls in the Temple of Truth when her business in Berenice’s court was over.

‘That won’t be soon, though,’ she said. ‘I may have to stay for the rest of the year.’ And then, ‘Someone’s behind us again.’

‘Let’s go.’ Kleopatra caught hold of her elbow. ‘This way.’ They passed left and right and right again down a dark and steeply sloping passage and came out into the heady scents of a small fruit market. A beggar spat at them as they passed. Kleopatra rolled her eyes. ‘Ignore him.’

‘If I took notice of everyone who spat at us,’ Hypatia said, ‘we’d still be in the upper city. These people hate us, and they don’t even know who we are.’

‘If they knew you were the Chosen of Isis, they’d stone you to death in the street.’

Ducking under a saffron-yellow awning, Kleopatra bought a net full of peaches, and handed the fruit to Hypatia. In her lightly accented Greek, she said, ‘For my aunt, a gift from her niece.’ And more quietly. ‘Are we safe yet?’

‘I’m not sure. Keep moving. And keep talking so I can look around. Tell me why so many people wear blue here, when further back, near the valley, it was yellow?’

Kleopatra set off at a brisk pace. ‘It’s to do with factions and their hatred of each other. Yellow is for the War Party, led by Menachem, grandson of the Galilean who led the zealots out of Galilee and died fighting to rid the land of Romans. His people think they can do all their grandfathers did, but better. They rule the land around the valleys and they’re pledged to destroy the king and his family.’ She said this as if they were distant people, seen perhaps twice in a lifetime.

She went on. ‘Blue is for the Peace Party. Those who wear it are pledged to rid Israel of Rome by peaceful means, by prayer and diplomacy. They’re led by Gideon, known as the Peacemaker. The War Party want his death almost as much as they want the king’s. Menachem is the only one holding them in check. He says they’re not ready to fight yet, that they risk annihilation if they act too soon.’

They passed under an arch. A crowd of blue-clad women stepped aside, hard-eyed. The blue was not all one colour; some were paler than dawn sky, washed almost to white, some were the deep blue of woad traded from the far side of the empire, some were stained with berry juice and almost black. A prick at the back of Hypatia’s neck said someone was following still, but she, who could see through the heart of men’s souls, could see nothing.

Kleopatra was deep in one-sided conversation, following her own inner line of thought.

‘It’s all the fault of Ananias, the High Priest. The Hebrew god is jealous of the other gods which means his people have no choice of worship. They pray to be rid of Rome and Rome stays, therefore the Hebrews believe that the invaders have been sent as a punishment for their poor behaviour. If they hate us, it’s only because they hate themselves more.’

‘Did someone tell you that?’ Hypatia asked. They turned right into a narrow alleyway and had to pass a throng this time of men and youths marked by patches of hidden yellow, a fleck on a neckerchief here, a thread through an armband there. They parted to let the women go by.

‘Who would tell me?’ Kleopatra gave a short laugh. ‘Men have been stoned for saying such things.’

‘What makes you think you’re safe?’

‘Nobody listens to a girl. I can say what I like as long as I’m careful who I say it to. Hyrcanus knows what I think, but he won’t tell anyone.’

‘He might tell Iksahra,’ Hypatia said, absently. She scanned the market, trying to see what did not fit.

Kleopatra shrugged. ‘Maybe. But she hates everyone also. Was she the one behind us earlier?’

‘Possibly. One of them.’ Hypatia was turning circles now, trying to see through the blue-clad crowd that followed as they passed out of the narrow alley and into yet another teeming market square. ‘I think there are two, maybe three. The question is whether they are together or apart.’

‘Really?’ Caught by the new urgency in her tone, Kleopatra said, ‘If we run, we could lose them. We could go left here and across the square and—’

‘No, wait.’ Hypatia caught the girl’s arm. ‘Not everyone who follows is an enemy.’ She turned the girl round so that she could hold her shoulders and look down into her eyes. ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

Hypatia read no hesitation in her face. Truly the afternoon had wrought miracles. ‘In that case, will you stay here for a moment? I won’t be long.’

The girl’s eyes flew wide, but she nodded, and stepped back under an awning and crouched down. Fast as a mouse, and as delicate, she swept up a dozen small stones and balanced them on the back of one hand. Transformed, she was a street child playing knucklebones.

Hypatia plunged back through the blue-clad throng towards the alley on the square’s western edge, following a flutter of linen that might not have been there, and a half-sensed feeling that was old and yet new.

The alley ran from east to west and was dark along its length. Halfway along, on the north side, was a house of only a single storey nested between two others far taller. A set of stairs sloped down from its flat roof. A bundle of rags twitched in the tight angle of the stairs’ foot. As she reached it, the rags unfolded in a single fluid movement. A knife gleamed once in the shadows and was still.

She said, ‘Pantera?’

Pantera grew from the dark. There was barely light enough
to show the lines of exhaustion on his face, but Hypatia was trained to see beyond the outer skin, and what she saw was the man she had met in Alexandria, a man whose will shone like polished iron, and was as hard. He had lost that polish on the day after Rome’s fire. It was back now, just as bright and sharp and hard as when she had first met him.

He was studying her with a disconcerting frankness, one brow raised. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I am. You, on the other hand, look exhausted. Have you slept at all since you left Caesarea?’

‘No.’ His gaze still fed on her face. ‘Am I alone in that?’

She gave a wry smile. ‘Not at all. But I’m on my way back to the palace where I have a safe bed, while you will need to find somewhere—’

‘We have somewhere. Yusaf has a house here. He is giving us refuge.’

‘Yusaf ben Matthias? The counsellor who petitioned the king?’ A memory flashed between them of absurdly weighty silk, of a weightier beard and eyes sunk so deep they were hard to read. ‘The petitioner whose failure tipped Caesarea into riots last night?’

‘He’s safe company for now.’ Pantera looked both ways down the alley’s length. ‘We don’t have much time,’ he said. ‘Iksahra is following you. We can’t be seen together.’

‘I thought we’d lost her in the markets round the Hasmonean palace,’ Hypatia said.

‘You did. But she’ll find you again soon enough: she knows you’re looking for herbs for the princess. There aren’t many places to look.’

‘So tell me what I need to know.’

He gave his report with military precision, listing points on his fingers. ‘Saulos knows that you and I are linked. He tried to burn Mergus last night and his man named you in the list of those whom he intended to destroy. I will do what I can to prevent it, but his resources are many. We think he has blocked the message-birds so we can’t send or receive messages from
Rome. I sent one to Jerusalem from Caesarea, but it hasn’t arrived. The dovecote is at Yusaf’s house; he knows all that comes and goes.’

‘Iksahra will have caught the message-bird,’ Hypatia said. ‘She hunts them with her falcons. At Caesarea, the birds fly along the water’s edge, where the air lifts over the waves. They are barely sport.’

‘Does she take the ones coming in or just the ones leaving?’

‘Both, I think.’

‘Which means they will have read the messages we sent. Everything that went to the Poet in Rome, and all the orders she sent back.’ Pantera took in a long breath and let it out slowly through his teeth.

He had about him the sense of a drawn bow, tense, but alive, waiting for the loose; of a falcon at the moment before the stoop; of a man, hunting, and near his quarry.

She said. ‘Is Mergus …?’

‘Sore, but whole. He knows he’s a target now. As are you.’

‘You warned us of that before we left Rome,’ Hypatia said.

‘I said I would not let it happen.’

‘But if he knows you at all, Saulos will know the depth of your care for us and he will use that as his weapon against you. There may come a time when you have to choose between saving a people or your friends. If it comes to that, remember that death is a release; the dead do not grieve their loss of life, only the living.’

Pantera closed his eyes. Across his face, briefly, passed the stain of an old grief; of a woman slain, and a daughter dead in his arms.

Hypatia said, ‘We should part now, before Iksahra finds us.’

‘We should.’ Stooping, Pantera pressed a dry, unexpected kiss to her cheek. ‘Stay safe,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens.’

And he was gone, leaving her in empty silence.

At the alley’s opposite end, Pantera stopped and drew a strip of torn blue linen from his tunic, and wound it round his arm.
Blue for the Peace Party which today, by some alchemy he wished never to learn, had control of this side of the lower city. Jerusalem wasn’t like Caesarea, there were no riots yet, but the pressure of inaction was worse; here, gangs roamed the streets with no greater purpose than that they must keep the other faction away.