‘You’ve done that?’ Menachem’s voice skipped over the water, sharp with surprise. ‘You’ve been up and out, then back along the way we came?’
‘My father thought it would be a useful learning. I was sick with fright halfway along, and thought the sway set up by my puking would make me fall, which made me wet myself. My father said the only thing I did not stink of at the end was dung. He was right.’
Mergus dropped from the aqueduct, and then Aaron, who always followed him. They bobbed up near them, swearing.
Menachem said, softly, ‘Did he hate you?’
‘No, I think he loved me.’ Unexpectedly, Pantera found his throat too tight to say more.
‘I am not a father to offer love, but I will be in your debt for life if you can find the ladder that will take us out of this place as swiftly as you said.’ Menachem’s teeth, too, were chattering. He fought to sound even.
Pantera smiled. ‘I brought you in here. There is no debt if I lead you out again. Follow me, and make sure the men follow you in a chain, so nobody gets lost.’
He closed his eyes and called on his childhood, and then, neither twelve years old nor fully a man, struck out for the opposite side of the cistern. Men had been dropping in at regular intervals, cursing the cold. They made a line behind him, trusting.
At a certain point, he stopped. ‘Here.’ And then to Menachem. ‘Look up.’
They looked together, past the lightless stone of the cistern, and on, up through a black tunnel to…
‘I can see a star!’ Menachem made himself whisper. Even a hand’s breadth of sky seemed too close to the Roman garrison. ‘Why is there only one? The sky should be full of them.’
‘There’s a well house above us, roofed over to keep the wind-blown grit from contaminating the water. Years ago, when I was here, I cut a small hole in the roof to see through, as you are seeing now.’
‘At your father’s behest.’
‘Not entirely. I became lost down here the first time because I couldn’t see the way out. Before the second try, I cut the hole. The ladder is here.’ Pantera took Menachem’s hand and raised it high. ‘Can you feel steps cut in the rock? As long as they haven’t worn away, we can climb out.’
He reached up to the first of the projecting spurs. He had to jump to reach it when he was twelve; now it was not even a particularly long stretch.
Menachem caught his elbow. ‘How many men will be able to stand in the well house?’
‘My father thought fifty. We will bring up the first five decades, and then move them out to shelter. That’ll be the time of most danger. I’ll go first: if there’s a guard, it will be best he believes I have come alone. If I live, I’ll whistle to call you up.’
The ladder took Pantera to the surface faster than it had done when he was young; he was stronger, and he hated the water more. No guard waited in the well house. He knelt, with his face next to the well opening, and whistled softly. Menachem joined him, and then Mergus and Aaron and then the others of the first five decades. They fitted closely in the well house, wetly cold. Pantera knelt by the door, feeling for the hinges, and the bolts that held the latch.
‘Is it locked?’ Menachem asked.
‘It never has been. A wooden latch lifts on the outside. There’s a knot hole that a man might reach through to tip it up…’ His fingers were a child’s, searching across the grain until he found the knot and hooked his knife’s tip around it and drew it inwards, slowly.
The knot came free of the wood. Wind hollered through the tiny gap, small foretaste of its fury. Pantera put his eye to it and, for the first time this day, saw the grey-pink dawn.
He cursed, softly. ‘We’ve lost the night. We will have to call Moshe and his men soon, or they’ll be seen.’
‘Where do we go?’ asked Mergus, who had worked his way to Pantera’s shoulder.
‘The women’s palace is ahead and to our left. We can hide behind it, and call the rest up. This is the best time to attack, just as the night Watch changes with the day Watch. Those who have stood all night will be tired, those who are waking now will still be lagged with sleep. We will have all the advantage.’
Pantera’s knife slipped in the sweat of his hand. He wiped it dry on his tunic and gripped it again, drew back and back and — there! — let fly…
A man grunted, softly. Iron chimed on stone. From somewhere close by, Menachem said, ‘I would not have thought it possible with the wind as fierce as it is, with the man turning against the light, to put a blade between his cheek plates and the neck of his mail like that.’
Pantera forced his eyes open, not knowing they had closed: that was a thing his child-self had done that his man-self had abandoned long ago. ‘You have to do it like that,’ he said, suddenly shy. ‘If you don’t hit the larynx, they cry out and alert the others.’
Menachem was looking at him queerly. He shook himself and forced a smile. ‘He was alone. We should go on to the sons’ palace. It’s smaller than this one.’
‘Herod’s sons?’ Aaron asked, and spat.
‘Yes. They lived here before he had them slain. There’s room there for all of us. We’ll join and then go forward together.’ Pantera raised his arm in signal. Three groups of ten men slid out from behind the women’s palace in whose shade they had been hiding. The remaining seven groups made a long, narrow line, sliding along the shelter of the casement wall.
He retrieved his knife and ran with them. At a certain point, he left the safety of the wall and dodged inwards, across the open bluff, to hide in the shelter of another tall stone wall. A malevolent wind backed with the sun, catching sand and grit to hurl at the running men.
‘Make your scarves into masks again. Leave only your eyes free. It’ll help you breathe.’ Pantera did it faster than he had done on the valley floor. The child in him was small now, watching the man do things it had barely dreamed about in his youth. He took up his knife and drew on the back wall of the palace.
‘The main palace is here, at the western edge of the casement. There are storerooms there which will still hold weapons, but the garrison has its quarters in the north, around the upper tier of Herod’s hanging villa. There are baths and stores there; it’s easiest for the men. Their weapons will be there. We will attack while the Watch are looking eastward at Moshe and his men.’
He turned to Menachem. His smile came easily, bright and sharp. ‘Now is the time to whistle. And be ready to run.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Hypatia and the queen left the palace together in secrecy, and, in secrecy, they arrived at the small, unremarkable hall set behind the Temple, in which the city’s councillors gathered to give their opinions on matters of law and faith, these two being inseparable within the walls of Jerusalem.
Berenice was dressed in simple blues of a hue so deep it could have been taken from the night sky. Her dress and the long-coat over it were cut in the style of the Hebrew women: modest and unfussy, with not a thread of silver or gold. She wore no jewels at neck or ears or fingers. No hint of balsam sweetened the air where she had been.
Her slippers were of satin, and she walked on clouds of righteousness. Her hair was bound back in a black sheaf of perfect modesty — the first time Hypatia had seen it so — and covered with a veil of the night-blue silk. No Hebrew councillor could have deemed her anything other than what she was: a widow and a queen.
The men of the Sanhedrin had not seen her yet; the three windows of their council chamber and the tiers of candles cast their light into the centre of the hall, where Iksahra and Kleopatra stood together, black skin welded to white in their closeness. By not a flicker, not a trembling of a hair, did Iksahra show that she knew Hypatia had arrived.
Hypatia stood in the doorway, holding herself to stillness against the turmoil of her heart. She did not let her eyes rest anywhere for long, but glanced instead at the small, lowceilinged hall, and the sixty or seventy men packed into it, dressed in their long-coated finery, crushed on to benches in a rough semicircle.