He said, ‘I heard what befell you. I am sorry. I…’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m well. But my aunt and Hypatia…’ She was more afraid than she had let herself know. She dashed away new tears with the back of her hand and scowled at Jucundus.
He said, ‘Your lady aunt, the queen, is held below, in the cellars. It might be wise to take her food and water.’
‘She has none?’
Jucundus took her shoulder and turned her in the direction of the kitchens. ‘The guards are from the garrison, but some are men who know you. You would be permitted entry, I think, when we are not. You could take what she needs.’
‘Where’s Saulos?’
‘On the fourth floor with Vilnius, discussing plans for Estaph’s crucifixion. They want it to be public, but not to cause a riot.’
Kleopatra gaped. ‘Anything will cause a riot. They could crucify a dead sheep just now and it would cause chaos, you know that.’ She caught at Jucundus again, suddenly young. ‘Don’t go. Please.’
‘I would stay if I could, but my orders are unambiguous. I am to return to Caesarea and take control of my men. They have… not acted as I would have wished. Go now.’ He pushed her again, more firmly. ‘Think of your aunt, not me or yourself. She needs you.’
*
The slaves’ corridors were blocked with a panic of near-naked men and women, rancid with the stench of fear, unbearably hot. Kleopatra barged and bullied her way through until she came to the door to the cellars. The guard who stood before it was one she knew by sight, although she could not remember his name.
As an alternative, she produced her most blinding smile. The guard flushed, which was a good sign. She made her eyes wide. ‘Have you seen my cousin?’
‘Lady, he was in his chambers, making ready for the off.’
‘It’s true, then, we are leaving? Where to?’
He eyed her with genuine concern. ‘Were you not told? You’re leaving for Antioch in Syria at tomorrow’s dawn at the latest. Lord Saulos had his men searching for you all morning.’
‘They found us. I had gone hunting, with the beastwoman. We caught a quail. See? I cooked it for my aunt.’
He had already looked at the basket she had brought from the kitchens and had smelled the stolen meat beneath the warming cloth. She grinned at him, as if that simple act made him a co-conspirator.
The guard became flustered and picked at his mail. She saw him dead with a knife through his throat, and closed her eyes that he might not see it too.
She said, ‘Are you going to Damascus with us?’
He was older than she’d thought; lines etched his eyes, his mouth, the prickles of beard beginning on his chin, where white mixed with black, to the detriment of both. He said, ‘Lord Saulos has ordered that one company is to go, the rest to stay. The centurions will draw lots to choose those who will leave. If they have done so, I haven’t heard the result yet.’
‘Which do you want? To go, or to stay?’
He drew himself tall. ‘A courageous man does not fly in the face of battle.’
‘Of course.’ Kleopatra looked up at him. ‘I am told I must go with my uncle, but I would take food and wine to my aunt first.’
Her basket was fulclass="underline" a flagon of wine, dates, almond cakes, a roast quail stuffed with garlic from the previous night, a bundle of the hard, unleavened bread that the hunters took on long days and swore kept them happy from dawn until dusk. She held it up a second time. ‘With your permission?’
His orders were to let no one through; they both knew that. Behind them, chaos held the corridors, but within it were only slaves. He winked. ‘Be quick.’
She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek. He was smiling as the door shut behind her.
Three more guards blocked her way. The first was at the top of the stairs and the second stood by the lit torch in its wall bracket, at the place where the corridor branched, right to the wine cellars, left to the dungeons. Both of these let her past on the grounds that if she had got through the door at the top, it must be with permission.
The last was less easy, but he was at least a man she knew by name as well as by sight. Surinus of the second century of the garrison Guard stood round the corner from the cells themselves, out of the line of view of the prisoners, lest he be bewitched by the two women within. He kept his sword permanently drawn and had on enough armour to face down a squadron of Parthian heavy cavalry.
This deep underground, this close to the prisoners, he was a lot more unsettled than his brethren, less willing to allow a relative of the queen’s to pass. His blade blocked her path, un-yielding.
She held up her basket, as she had three times before, so that he could see the innocence of its contents. His blade did not move. ‘Lady, I can’t let you pass. I’ll be flogged and you’ll be taken to Damascus in chains. Go back. I’ll let them know you tried.’
‘They know already,’ Kleopatra said. ‘They can hear every word. It’s like a grave in here, there’s so little sound.’
He shivered, and tried to hide it. She raised her basket. ‘They need food,’ she said, ‘or they’ll die and then how will Saulos treat you?’
His blade wavered.
‘You’ll hear what we say and I can’t possibly enter the cages. What harm can it do?’ Surinus had been her friend, one of those who had turned a blind eye when she left the palace by the slaves’ door. She laid her hand on his blade, pushing, pushing, said, ‘Nobody will know. You’ll be on the road to Syria by tomorrow.’
‘Only one company leaves. My centurion might not win the ballot.’
‘So leaving would be winning?’ She tilted her head. ‘When did I ever lose at dice?’
A smile grew round his eyes. ‘I didn’t know you had a hand in the drawing of lots.’
She grinned. ‘Nor does Vilnius, but can you see him denying me the chance if I ask him right?’
Surinus laughed then, roughly. At last, his blade swung away from her resisting hand. He jerked his head to the cells. To her retreating back, he called, ‘Don’t let her bewitch you. Not your lady aunt; the other one.’
Swiftly, Kleopatra turned the corner, away from the torchlight and hazy warmth into a place so cold, so dank, it made her gasp, and clutch her tunic closer.
Light leaking from the corridor lit three pale faces turned to her. One of them was a man; the giant Parthian. She had time to take that in, to understand the enormity of it — a man and two women in the same small room, without privacy, without decency — before one of the women stood, and took a tentative step to bars set in the immovable stone of floor and ceiling.
‘Hypatia!’ Kleopatra ran the last strides, thrust her hands forward. They met, palm to palm, through the bars. ‘You’re so cold.’
She said it loudly, to give the Chosen of Isis time to gather herself, to look at and read the scrap of paper that had passed between them, that had come from the message-dove and was, if she were truthful, her reason for being there.
She looked past the exhaustion on Hypatia’s features to Berenice, who stood just behind.
‘Your majesty…’
Her aunt was filthy, exhausted, cold beyond imagining. Her eyes were twin pits burrowing in below her high patrician brow. Kleopatra read despair in their darkness, and chose not to believe it.
She said, ‘Let me get a torch. I can’t see you properly.’
Surinus flushed full of shame when she stormed back, and did not stand in her way, but gave her his spare torch, and let her light it from the one propped in the wall bracket. Pitch and tight-bound wool fizzed and spat. Bright light hurt her eyes, already widened by the dark.
‘Majesty, Hypatia, Estaph…’ She tipped the light to flow over each one as she spoke. Estaph was more bruised than the others, but whole. He had taken the opposite side of the cell, eschewing the warmth of proximity for the probity of distance, as if anybody cared how they sat, here in the dark and the cold.
‘I brought food. Not very much, but…’ She emptied her basket a piece at a time and pushed it through the bars. Estaph turned to her at last, showing bloody bruises on every angle of his face. Someone had wiped him clean in the dark, with no water, smearing the blood so that he stared at her through a mask of red and blue and black. He was so still, she thought he might be undead, a ghul with lost eyes to steal her soul, until he took a breath and levered himself upright.