Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [91]
Although muffled, the words carried perfectly well to Jocelyn, who lashed out a foot and kicked the handmaiden painfully in the ribs. ‘I am thy mistress, jade, and your conniving knavery will not save thee from my wrath. I should have been told of what occurred beneath my own roof. Get thee hence to the slave quarters and await the manifestation of my displeasure against you, thou most wicked child.’
Felicia stood, her eyes downcast. Woefully, she began to speak but was hushed to silence by Jocelyn as she nodded to Drusus, who stood behind the handmaiden.
‘Have this wretch of a girl taken from my sight,’ Jocelyn announced as Drusus hustled Felicia away.
The significance of this little scene may have been lost on any casual spectator, even one with wings. But it is certain that, had they also been party to a meeting taking place less than a mile across the city, at the edge of the Jewish quarter at Haghia near the bejewelled synagogue and the copper market, they would not have been so confused.
The house was innocuous, like a hundred others, completely anonymous to anyone as a hotbed of rebellion and plots. That, presumably, was why Matthew Basellas, Ephraim and Yewhe and their Zealot brothers were within the house, living in the shadows of the city. Stealth was their watchword as they moved about Byzantium’s nooks and crannies, scheming and searching for the opportunities to create mayhem and destruction.
As was the Zealot way.
Basellas was a changed man since the murder, at his own orders, of his brother. Simeon had been a strategist of considerable brilliance and Basellas had leaned on his brother’s wisdom and expertise on more occasions than he had chosen not to. Now the true and brutal nature of Matthew Basellas was beginning to emerge with no one to hold it in check any longer. Ephraim was nothing but a glorified ‘yes’
man, agreeing, with ever-increasing sycophancy to each and every one of Basellas’s outrageous schemes. Yewhe and Benjamin and others like them within the Zealots such as the miller, Saul Acunes, were willing lieutenants, perfectly happy and willing to die in the pursuance of any of the hair-brained situations that Basellas dreamed up next.
Today, however, more mundane matters were being discussed. Simple, yet deadly, assassination. ‘Benjamin has been given his target,’ Acunes told the assembled kananaios council.
‘And his sicarii knife?’ asked Ephraim who roared with laughter at his own cleverness until he realised that no one else was laughing with him. ‘And I say unto you, good luck and fortune to that most blessed of our sons of Zealotry, that he may strike quickly; like the scorpion, and with much secrecy.’
Though he was stating the obvious, Ephraim’s rousing wishes were met with a murmured chorus of approval. ‘What say you, Matthew?’ he asked, seeking the support of his leader.
‘Knives into black hearts,’ said Basellas in a slow, almost painful drawl. ‘Black Roman hearts. Yes. Black. Like their eyes, mirrors to their black souls...’
Ephraim and Yewhe exchanged nervous glances and then, almost simultaneously, offered their verbal support.
‘Fine words, Matthew,’ noted Ephraim.
‘I shall follow you to the ends of the earth, my leader,’
noted Yewhe.
And both, despite the livid madness bubbling in the eyes of their commander, meant every word.
An aerial view of the city would only be possible for birds and angels but let us suppose, for the briefest of moments, that our winged traveller existed outside of the realms of fantasy.
High above the rooftops of the Jewish quarter, the highest point within the city was the tower of Nebuchadnezzar, named after the Babylonian king whose dreams the prophet Daniel had successfully interpreted. At its very apex, the Pharisees Titus and Phasaei stood against the stone ramparts, hundreds of feet above the ant-like people milling around below them. It was, both men simultaneously decided, like a vision of hell from the heights of heaven.
Zeus’s face stared