The dying sun was a rage of red silks flung across the western horizon; a bruised and bloody memory of battle.
As Pantera had wanted, the king’s rough-made tomb was bathed in its light, unshadowed by everything else, flooded in ochre and umber, drawn as if by the power of prayer into the bloodied vengeance of the sky.
A pile of high rocks fashioned into the likeness of a cave with the top surface flattened to accept this scarf of sunlight, the king’s tomb had not the grandeur of a Latin mausoleum, nor the beauty of a Greek one, but in its very rudeness carried a kind of majesty.
Menachem lay within its heart, as one newly asleep. I have heard it said that Alexander lay in state for months after his death and his flesh was not corrupted. It may be that way for all kings. Certainly this one had not suffered in the day’s heat as I had expected. His face had sunk a little, deepening the hollows under his cheeks, but he was still recognizably the man I had killed.
A priest mumbled in Hebrew when they slid him into the cool dark, wrapped in white linen and anointed with oils, but it was Pantera’s barely accented Greek that rang over us now, that reached the far corners of this valley and the hills beyond so that the few who were left could hear, and the rocks around could store the memory.
‘Men and women of Jerusalem; friends… Menachem was our king, but before that he was our brother in arms, the quiet voice in our midst with the strong arm and the swift eye. He it was who had the vision to see how he might rid this land of Rome and yet remain apart from Parthia. He it was, great-hearted, who battled on the field for freedom, and in the temple for justice. He it was whose wisdom held us firm while the legions besieged us. He it was who led the charge out of here, to destroy those legions as they fled from his wrath. He it was who, hearing the oracle’s words, stillventured on to the field of battle, not fearing what he knew must come. We grieve him as a brother, as a comrade, as a friend and as a king. Each of these is lost to us.’
He paused there. The sun was losing its fire. Broad, cold shadows chilled us, except across the tomb, where a single sheaf of light remained. Pantera stood with his back to it, making of his own shadow the gnomon that pointed over the dead king and away.
Horgias and I were standing, bound hand and foot, at a place where we could see everyone and everything. We saw how the grieving men drank in Pantera’s words as if they might heal the unhealable; how, in that moment, each man was his, to mould as he wished. If he had told them all to turn and leap from the dangerous edge behind us, they would have done it without question.
What he asked for, showman that he was, cost them more than that.
‘We who are left now have not the strength of numbers nor the power to assault Jerusalem and remove Eleazir from his throne. What we must find instead is patience. Patience through the long winter, while we gather numbers and find what Eleazir has planned. For it may be that, caught between Parthia and Rome, we must side with one power or the other, to see Eleazir defeated. I will not hold any man of you to this.
‘If you wish to leave, to join your families, you can go freely with no shame. Those of us who remain will winter in Caesarea, where we few amongst many will draw no attention. We leave in the morning. You have until then to make your choices.’
Two of the Hebrews chose to stay with Pantera, joining Mergus and Estaph as his bodyguard. The rest went back to their families, leaving singly or together, to ride out into thevillages and take the risk of being known later by Eleazir’s men.
It was near dark when Pantera came to Horgias and me, bringing a knife.
‘You still have the same choice you did yesterday,’ he said. ‘I will cut you free now, and set you out in the desert with a horse, and you can go where you will. Or you can come with us to Caesarea. There’s a chance you might catch up with your general, but I doubt it. He belongs in Syria and will have gone back to Antioch or Damascus. You may certainly go on to join him, but you will do so as men who have failed. If you stay with us, you have a chance to come back here in the spring and regain what is lost.’
‘Why not now?’ Horgias said. ‘We could go back in now and take it.’
‘You can certainly try.’
Pantera rolled his tongue around his teeth and then said something in the native tongue that neither of us understood. When we made no response, he repeated it, more slowly, louder.
We looked at each other, and at him. He smiled tightly. ‘I said, “You are Roman and we of Eleazir’s party take great pleasure in slaughtering your countrymen. We took five days to skin alive a man who tried to join you. Imagine what we can do now, when we have all winter.”’
‘Very funny.’ I wasn’t smiling.
Nor was Pantera. ‘If you want to go, I won’t stop you. But without fluency in both Aramaic and Hebrew, you will die.’
‘We’ll find someone to help us who speaks it,’ Horgias said.
For a long moment, Pantera said nothing, only regarded us both flatly. But I saw him uncurl his hands at his sides with a steadiness that spoke of infinite control, brought to its limits, and remembered an inn on the borders of Hyrcania, and ahorse pushed too fast by this man, who was so afraid of his own rage.
‘You just killed the one man who could have made Israel a whole nation,’ he said, softly. ‘The only reason you’re still alive is because I have asked it and the only person who might conceivably help you is me.’
I was not afraid of his rage: in that moment, I was not afraid of anything. I spat on the ground between his feet. ‘I’d rather spend the entire winter dying.’
IV: Caesarea, Judaea, Winter, AD 66-67
Chapter Thirty-Two
Winter in Caesarea: four months of excoriating idleness in which nothing happened and everything changed.
Governor Cestius Gallus died the month after we arrived; that was the first change. As Pantera had predicted, he had left Caesarea before we reached it, and marched the remnants of his sorry campaign in through the gates of Antioch. Soon after, he took to his bed and was dead by midwinter.
So said the messages written on onion-skin parchment wrapped to the legs of the messenger birds that fluttered into the dovecote in the yard outside the house in which Horgias and I had our secret billet.
Ishmael, a youth with wide, sad eyes, tended to the doves and to us with equal care. He had the shocked look of one who has brushed too close to death, too young. At other times, in other days, I would have wheedled his story out of him, but that winter in Caesarea I fed on the messages from other cities and took no notice of the messenger.
As Pantera had known we must, Horgias and I had travelled with him to the city on the coast, and done what we could to make ourselves ready to return to Jerusalem. We slept a great deal, ate well, and worked with our weapons asif we were still under Lupus’ command. We were harsher on ourselves than any centurion could have been, for in action, in sweat and bruises and curses, we were able to forget. Only when we relaxed did we remember who and what we had lost. Relaxation was rare.
The news of Gallus’ death came in the first month. It gave us hope that a new commander might put heart into the remaining legions and march swiftly on Jerusalem. We spent our evenings planning, thinking, creating ideas and dismantling them, piece by piece, until we knew all the ways — the very few ways — by which we might regain our Eagle.
Three months later, after the Saturnalia, the doves brought the name of Gallus’ replacement, the new governor of Syria and general of all the eastern legions. Corbulo had been the last man to command all the legions, but Corbulo had been recalled to Greece; his replacement could not be as good, but he could be better than some we had had. We knew hope for the first time.