‘I burned enough of it.’
‘And most of your men died as you did so.’
Saulos shrugged. ‘I have enough men. And they will glory in the kingdom God brings to them. You will see it from whichever rank of Hades you have entered.’
The room was exactly as Kleopatra had said: an antechamber, where visitors might be kept for long enough to reflect on the king’s wealth and their own insignificance. Windows opened along the heights of the wall opposite, nine oblongs of unblemished blue, casting their cool light in patterns on the floor.
Pantera passed them, and felt a draught of cool, fresh air, and yearned to sit and let it wash him. Not yet, though. Two doors lay behind him, one in the south, one in the west, both hanging ajar: the bedroom and the dining room that was once a bath room. He had an idea and set about testing it.
He leaned in and tapped Saulos’ sword with his own. The long blade swayed away and came back again, steady, firm, true.
Pantera stepped back. ‘You came here to kill Menachem, but you will fail. Everyone knows you are here; if I can’t kill you, others will, and then Israel will have peace.’
Saulos slashed at his face. Pantera felt the rasp of iron in the air, smelled the whet of its blade. He spun away out of reach.
Saulos said, ‘Not if the governor of Syria gets here in time with his legions. You know I have sent for him?’
‘Iksahra’s falcons took your dove from the sky. The governor isn’t coming.’
‘ Liar! ’ Saulos raged forward, through the haze of light from the windows. Their blades clashed and clashed again and they parted, each a little wiser. ‘I took the beastwoman prisoner before she could do harm. And Hypatia is dead. I had her throat cut before you could reach her.’
‘No. I would know.’
‘How?’
‘I would know.’ He was sure of that. Almost sure.
They came to a natural halt, facing each other across the fountain. The door was not locked. It swayed a little, caught by some unfelt current.
The air was thickening, braiding itself in ropes that drew taut between them, but they were further apart than they had been, each so wary now of the other’s assault that they kept to the margins of the room.
Pantera had measured the distance; thirteen paces plus a half. He had planned the two moves it would take, one to pull his knife from his sleeve, the other to throw it, and how much closer Saulos could be by the time of the throw.
And then there was the door, which had moved again, slowly, soundlessly, and was lying open by a hand’s breadth.
Pantera moved a pace to his right, so that the high windows’ light was not blinding him. ‘Yusaf ben Matthias came with me out of the city last night. This morning at dawn, he bore witness when Gideon the Peacemaker anointed Menachem as the rightful king of Israel. I thought you should know; Yusaf is the one who sent us the scroll that proved Menachem’s right to the throne. He will be the new king’s foremost counsellor.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Saulos stopped and stared at him in frank disbelief.
Pantera did three things then, fast: he threw his sword high up over the fountain, so that it tumbled down in a dazzle of water-light and sunlight; he drew the knife from his left arm, and threw it; and, as it left his fingers, he hurled himself to the left.
The knife missed: he had known that it would. The falling blade sheared close to Saulos’ left shoulder, slicing away a collop of flesh in a mirror to the wound Menachem had sustained on Masada. Saulos grunted like a kicked horse, and swayed away from the threat, as any man would, but he ran forward, which was his undoing.
Pantera continued his roll, tumbling like an acrobat straight through the open door of the king’s dining room that had once been Herod’s private baths.
He saw the vertical shadow of the doorway pass him by and kicked the door shut as he cleared it, then thrust one hand down, pivoting on it until the bones of his elbow popped, and came round almost full circle, in time to drop the bar across, sending prayers to the old king, Herod the Great, and his paranoia that said every private room must be readily barred against intruders.
He ended near the dining couch, panting, and looked round at the only place in the world where Herod had absolute privacy.
The room was a paean to the hunt: mosaics livelier than anything in life showed antelope and lion, goat and cheetah, dove and falcon, all hunters and hunted, with figures of men, and some women, ordering the kills.
On other walls, naked men wrestled, in the Greek style, holding each other by the shoulders for the throw, while unclothed girls leapt over the horns of bellowing bulls. And in the centre of the ceiling, in the place where a king might look who lay back in his private bath, was an image of Helios, sun-god of the Greeks, picked out in all his daring, blazing beauty.
There was no trestle table covering the hole in the floor where the bath had been, only a rug of six sewn ibex skins, sleek and shining, and under those a board, which moved when Pantera pulled it, enough, he thought, to do what he needed. Perhaps enough. He risked his life on that one thing, having nothing else; his weapons were all gone.
He had not barred the door to the bedroom, only pushed it shut. Saulos kicked it open, abandoning his fabled composure.
‘ Ha! ’ He brandished two swords, Pantera’s short one in his left hand, the long cavalry blade in his right; a gladiator’s pose. Blood flowed freely down his arm from the wound on his shoulder, staining the sand-coloured silk.
Pantera stood with his back to the dining couch, unarmed. ‘Yusaf!’ He sent his voice beyond the walls. ‘You may as well show yourself. I am neither blind nor deaf nor stupid.’ To Saulos, who had stopped a pace inside the doorway, he offered a dry smile. ‘Did you think I didn’t know?’
‘You didn’t know when you first came to Jerusalem. You didn’t know on the night he sold you to me for a promise.’
‘Sold him?’ Yusaf’s voice came harsh from the outer room. ‘I gave him to you for the promise of peace under Rome, which is beyond price. I did not do it for the slaughter of innocents in Caesarea.’
Yusaf arrived at the threshold, a figure of ruined silk and conflict. His long face was pale beneath his beard, but he held a Roman short-sword in his hand, its point high, and steady.
Softly, Pantera said, ‘Did you not know he planned such bloodshed? Is it not obvious that he plans to do in Jerusalem what he did in Caesarea? That this has always been his plan?’
‘He said he would allow no more violence than was necessary.’ Yusaf’s attention flickered between them, settling on neither.
‘Oh, please!’ Pantera’s voice was a whip cast at his face. ‘You’ve known this man thirty years. Don’t tell me you still believe what he tells you?’
‘Ignore him!’ Saulos threw up a hand. ‘He’s goading you. Stay where you are while I finish this.’
‘Exactly, Yusaf, stay where you are. Be his puppet as you have been from the start while we-’
Pantera stepped smartly back, and sideways, using the dining couch as a shield against Yusaf’s charge. He threw up his hands And let them fall again, to the muffled sweep of an ibex hide and the crack of long bones on marble, and the silence of a blade, sailing high from nerveless fingers.
Pantera caught the hilt before it hit the ground and swept it down to rest against the bare neck that sprouted now from the floor: all but Yusaf’s head and one arm were lost in the pit that had once been a bath.
On the room’s far side, Saulos had not moved, but was breathing hard, as if he had done.
‘He’s been your puppet for a long time, hasn’t he?’ Pantera said. ‘He came to Rome, and before that to Alexandria, to Corinth, to Galatia. Did you let Seneca build him up at first and then seduce him, or was he yours from the start?’
‘I belong to no man!’ Yusaf twisted his head. Blood welled along the side of his throat where the blade lay hard along it. ‘Judaea needs peace and only Rome can bring that. I-’