Nothing came, and less than nothing; no word, no sign. Resting on the cusp of a breath, as near to death as she might come and still live, she thought she was forsaken, lost, alone.
Then she felt the hot press of a living pelt against her calf, and smelled the meat-mellow breath of a hunting cat. She heard its breath rasp by her ear, recoiled at the sharp prick of whiskers against her cheek, and when she looked deep in the dark, there was the smudge of black against paler black in a patterning she almost recognized and two green-amber eyes, that grew stronger as she gave them her attention.
She thought it was a leopard, sign of Pantera, and said so. Somewhere, the god laughed. The beast drew back its lips and padded closer until its outline was clear, taller than a leopard, longer-legged, with a muzzle more square, and a head held higher.
From all of these, she knew it as Iksahra’s cheetah, a beast that had viewed her with nothing short of disdain since the day she had first seen it. Nevertheless, it was here, in the space of Hypatia’s unbreath. She touched her forehead, as she might have done to Isis, or Ma’at or Apis, bull-god of Memphis, and waited. And waited. The beast blinked at her; the only movement in the void.
Again she asked, What would you have of me? Again the beast blinked, and in that movement she saw through the patterned pelt to the black skin of a woman behind, saw through its eyes to gold-brown eyes, saw black hair, tight as a shearling ram, and the flash of white teeth.
Pain flooded her then, the twisting knife that leaves a heart in fragments; the pain she had thought set aside, safely, that it might not undo her this close to the end.
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again both woman and beast were gone and in their place was the whistle of wings and the far, high keening cry of a falcon, bird of Isis, hunting.
Somewhere far beyond it, the god said, I would have you taste the true cost of life. There is no escape from this.
Hypatia breathed in, a great gulping swallow of air, of life, of cold and the present moment. Her head ached, as if the god had struck it in passing.
She took another breath, and stilled it, and came back to herself, to all that she had lost and gained and might lose again. Aloud she said, ‘Thank you.’
From behind, she heard Estaph take breath to speak. Without turning, she said, ‘No.’
‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’ They both spoke quietly and directed the sound at the floor: already they had learned what would carry to the guards and what would not.
‘You were going to suggest that you could kill us both now, and leave only yourself alive for the morning.’
‘It’s the only way.’
‘It’s one way,’ Hypatia said. ‘But if we take it, you will spend two full days dying and Saulos will have won. I have dreamed this every night of my adult life. I will not let you do it.’ She stepped to the centre of their small circle, standing between them. ‘If anyone should stay alive, it should be me. There may be a limit to what even Saulos will dare do to the Chosen of Isis.’
‘There isn’t,’ Berenice said. ‘He does this for his god, and his god feeds on the blood of others. There is no limit at all to what he will do. If you have dreamed this, you know it is true.’
Whatever else she had dreamed, Hypatia had certainly dreamed this moment, these words; now. Perhaps a dozen times in her life, the many branching pathways of possibility had brought her to this, the last of the turning points. Two pathways lay ahead, each one distinct from the other: the first, the easiest, led to certain death. The other… she wasn’t sure where the other led, she had been along it only twice in her life, and each time was different. Still, she was the Chosen of Isis, and she was not given to procrastination. She made her decision swiftly, took a breath, and let it out again.
Berenice saw a moment’s indecision and gave a small, tight smile of triumph. ‘Shall we draw lots for it?’ she asked. ‘The loser is the last one to remain alive.’
Chapter Forty-Five
Among the hills north of Jerusalem, a thousand small cooking fires showed the size of Menachem’s army.
Of those thousand, a hundred clustered close around the shoulder of a low hill and beneath their light a spring bubbled and sang, gold and silver as it passed from firelight to starlight.
In this place of drought and desert, a stone channel poured water down into a plunge pool deep enough to take one man standing upright and cover him to the crown of his head.
Stone steps led down into the water. Menachem stood naked on the topmost tread with his head bowed, watching the torch-made dapples shiver across the water. About him, about the spring, his army waited in such silence as was possible for two thousand men dressed in new mail, with new weapons and tired horses and a battle ahead.
Pantera stood apart, on the spring’s southern side, holding by the bridle the almond-milk mare that had been Iksahra’s parting gift to Menachem, that he might have a mount fit for a king. The mare was anxious. She stood, watching the fires, the men, the silver stream. A single foreleg struck the ground, calling thunder from the earth.
Menachem looked up at last. His gaze met Pantera’s and his mind returned from the distant place where it had been. He clasped his hands together. Black hairs grew in strong lines down his arms and thick swards on his chest. They stood upright now, testament to the morning’s chill.
‘How much longer?’ he asked.
Gideon stood with his back to them, staring at the faint strand of silver strung along the horizon. ‘Soon,’ he said.
And soon, soon, with goats grazing in the distance, and morning cookfires of Jerusalem threading the morning sky, with cockerels crying a greeting and small birds taking up the call, then did the shy sun blush over the edge of the mountains behind, and burn the dew off the thin grasses, so that the mare dropped her head at last to graze.
Pantera said, ‘In two hours, Hypatia, Berenice and Estaph will die.’
‘They will begin to die,’ Menachem said. ‘But we will be in Jerusalem by then. The city will be ours.’
‘It may not. If Iksahra has not ripped the hearts out of the garrison Guard, this will be a battle of a different mettle than the one on Masada.’
‘Even so, this is our home. You may be surprised-’
‘Look,’ Gideon said. He pointed at the rock at the pool’s lip, and they fell to silence, and watched as the sun lifted the shadow from Menachem’s feet to his thighs, to his torso, to his brow.
Between one breath and the next, he was bathed entirely in light and the stream flowed liquid gold. Then Gideon said, ‘Now,’ quietly, so that only Pantera, who was closest, might hear, and Yusaf, who stood a little behind.
Thus, in the first opening of dawn, before the gathered multitudes of his army, Menachem, grandson of the Galilean, stepped down into the liquid light, and under it, completely, so that only the very top of his black hair showed.
When he stepped out again, Gideon came forward with a jar of perfumed oil and drizzled it on to his streaming hair and raised his voice, so that it rang from hillside to hillside, to the two thousand men and their horses, to the goats and the rising hawks and the distant, discordant city.
‘I give you Menachem, of the line of David, of the tribe of Judah, grandson of the Galilean, greatest of Rome’s enemies. As spoken by the prophets, he shall ride into Jerusalem on an ass, symbol of peace. He shall cleanse the Temple of its iniquity. He shall free us from oppression. For in his righteousness is the path to peace, and he shall set the sons of Zion upon the sons of Greece, and shall dispel them, that our city, and our Israel, shall live without war, in a time of harmony, under the eyes of the living god!’