‘She won’t want to come.’
‘It will do her no harm to find that she cannot always have what she wants.’ On impulse, too fast to let herself think, Hypatia reached for Iksahra’s hand. ‘Stay safe.’
‘I am always safe,’ Iksahra said, and squeezed and let go and was gone to the beast gardens to find her falcons and her horse and the princess who did not want to be with her. Her cat paused in the doorway and gazed back with baleful yellow eyes.
Hypatia stood until it had gone, then dressed with care for the day ahead.
The sun was twice its own height over the horizon when Hypatia, the royal family and their closest attendants met in the audience room of the palace, which had become, perforce, their war room and council chamber.
They were grouped on dining couches; Berenice and Hyrcanus on one, Drusilla on a second with a gap where Kleopatra might have been. Agrippa, on the third, was at the head, with Polyphemos directly behind him. Hypatia took the fourth.
Estaph stood behind her, a solid presence, carved from mute flesh. He alone wore no silks, and kept his war axes at his either side. His parting from Mergus had been painful to watch, and Hypatia had said more than once that he should go with Pantera, to guard him, but the Parthian had his own path and had sworn himself to her protection for Pantera’s sake; he would not leave.
Hypatia had doubts as to what one man could do in the nightmare that Jerusalem had fast become, but she felt safer in his company than without it, which was a thing rare enough to be cherished.
They breakfasted on dates, olives and flat bread, and drank watered wine. Slippered slaves came and went, silently, with only the occasional anxious glance to show how far it was from being any ordinary day.
Then Jucundus brought eight armed guards, four more than had been at any of their previous daily meetings, and destroyed the illusion. He stationed them at the doorway, half on each side, with the door, a hand’s breadth of solid cedar, closed and barred between.
Before he had walked the breadth of the room, Berenice said, ‘Have you word that we are under assault?’
The officer came to a halt within the half-circle of their dining couches. He saluted, crisply, as he had each of the past eight mornings since the king’s retinue had found themselves confined to the palace, unwilling to stay, unable to leave. He met Berenice’s eye and then Hypatia’s, and last the king’s.
‘Not specifically, lady, but Saulos has had the Guard search the entire city for Pantera and not found him. This palace is the only place to which he cannot gain access. He knows Pantera is not here, because people saw him being carried from the city, but still he will want to look, and in looking he will want to fix his hold on power.’
Agrippa still held the throne in title, if not in fact; they deferred to him, let him speak first. He stood, thinking it made him more royal. His silks were of sun-yellow, with red at the margins; they made him smaller than did the gold of his public appearances, or the plainer white he favoured in private.
Presently, he turned to Jucundus. ‘Are you suggesting we invite him into the palace?’ he asked. ‘The usurper who would take a city and destroy it?’
‘Avowedly not, sire. But he has two and a half thousand men of the garrison Guard and we have five hundred Syrian cavalry not accustomed to siege warfare. They are all sworn to give their lives in your majesties’ service, but they will not live long if we are assaulted directly.’
‘Then we should assault them. Gain the advantage of surprise.’ For a moment, with the kind morning light behind him, with gold on his head, with iron in his voice, Agrippa sounded like a commander, and a king; only his words undid him for their lack of strategy.
The silence lasted a heartbeat too long. Hypatia held the queen’s gaze, until Berenice, too, stood.
‘My dear lord,’ she said, ‘I have no doubt our soldiers and yourself would fight with great courage in any assault, whether of our choosing or our enemy’s. But it remains the case that the numbers are overwhelmingly against us. You would die bravely, but you would still die, and all your men with you. And then, if we were lucky, we, too, would die — your women.’ She swept an arm that took in herself, Drusilla, Hypatia, the gap for Kleopatra. ‘If we were not lucky, we would be sold as the spoils of war, sent to the highest bidder, or to Rome, at Nero’s pleasure.’
‘There is also’, Jucundus said, with a note of apology, ‘the possibility that our assault may start the war we have striven so hard to prevent. Your subjects will not take well to seeing their king slaughtered in the streets with less care than a Passover lamb. They will fight, and once they start they will not be stopped, even if we are all dead.’
‘Which is precisely what Saulos intends,’ said Hypatia.
Agrippa closed his eyes against the sun’s soft touch. ‘We are a small nation; Rome is vast, with greater resources than any we can ever garner. Set against them, we cannot prevail.’ His eyes sprang open. ‘What then is your counsel? Should we leave this place? Flee to Antioch in Syria? To a Roman governor who will glory over our discomfort?’
‘Your majesty is ever wise.’ Jucundus bowed his relief. ‘The governor of Syria is not foolish. He will see the advantage in granting succour when it is most needed; he will know that this situation cannot last, that Saulos must be made to give up his hold on the city, and that when that happens he will be rewarded both by yourself and by the emperor for his grace.’
‘When should we go?’
‘Tonight, if it please your majesty, under cover of darkness. The gates to the east of this palace are held by our men, and even now I have auxiliaries scouting the countryside under pretence of a hunt. We shall have a safe route by nightfall.’
Agrippa paced the breadth of the room. Polyphemos tried to follow, but soon fell still, and stood winding his hands round each other until Hypatia wanted to choke him.
Mid-stride, Agrippa paused. ‘What if Saulos has already petitioned Syria for help? The Twelfth legion is there. It may yet be that he could call them here on a pretext, to help him secure his hold on our city.’
‘I believe he may have endeavoured to do so, majesty,’ Hypatia said. ‘But the message-birds fly only in daytime, and in daytime Iksahra’s falcons can hunt. She and Kleopatra are out now with them. He may send a courier by horseback: that we cannot stop. But I believe he will not succeed in calling aid by any faster route.’
‘Good!’ Agrippa smiled for the first time that morning. ‘We are well served!’ He clapped her on the back as if she were one of his captains, until Estaph stepped forward, alarmed at the assault on her person, and the king moved back.
Jucundus bowed as he left the room. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘At the dark of the moon. Be ready to leave when I call for you.’
Chapter Thirty-Four
With Mergus riding at his shield side, Pantera led a hundred men on a moonlit ride far more exacting than the one from Caesarea to Jerusalem. Near midnight, he brought them to the foothills south and east of Masada, leading them to a place where they could find shelter from the ruinous wind.
They tethered their horses in care of one boy to every twenty mounts and, wrapping their faces against the grit, came as close as one hundred men reasonably could to the base of the vast, flat-topped bluff that was Masada. Menachem, Mergus and eleven hand-picked climbers moved forward to gather round Pantera.
‘Masada is a diamond shape…’ Pantera took up a stone and drew a rhomboid in outline on the flat piece of rock at his feet. He felt clear-headed again, as he had on first entering Jerusalem. This time, newly, he felt the presence of the god, close as a lion’s breath behind his right shoulder. Mergus held the left, quiet as a ghost, viewing every Hebrew as a potential threat.