The Judas Case by Nicholas Graham

Author:Nicholas Graham [Graham, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781915603012
Publisher: The Book Guild; Troubador Publishing
Published: 2022-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

It was to have been a simple entrapment, overhearing the pillow-talk of the Greek Secretary of Gondophares, King of Parthia. We sent in men from the stonemasons’ and carpenters’ synagogue to knock out the wall between the place of entertainment and a listening room next door, and to build a partition of laths and animal hides, disguised with plaster and wash. The Greek Secretary was understood to have an enthusiasm for light-skinned blonde women and, astonishingly, Esther had managed to find one – a voluptuous Goth from the plains far north of the Pontus who traded as “Chione” and had been made to understand that she should draw out her man and take a close interest in whatever was troubling him. Then we arrived at Esther’s well in advance of the Greek Secretary and discovered that, in the confusion of the preparations, nobody had told the girl who normally worked in the room next door to leave.

Her beauty was as exceptional and unexpected as her presence. Dark skin, voluptuous body, and her face had none of the crude makeup that Esther encouraged her girls to use.

Zenobia looked at me. Her hair shone in the candlelight and I was thrilled, for the first time, by the sheer luxury of its body and its length. She raised both her hands to grasp the thickness of it and move it round so that it fell over her left shoulder and covered her breasts, her belly, her waist, her hips.

“I suppose,” she said, “that you’ll just want to talk?”

“Didn’t anybody tell you?”

“What? That my next customers were going to be an old man and a scholar?”

My junior, a young man from the school at Tiberias called Boaz, looked down and clutched his tablets.

“No, they didn’t,” she said before I could respond. “So what happens? You make the noises and he writes it all down? Because I have to warn you. I’m not a screamer. Unlike that Goth next door.”

“We are here to listen.” I tapped the false wall, which rattled alarmingly.

“Oh that,” she said. “Just so long as you’ve not brought any of those carpenters or plasterers with you.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“Their manners are crude. And they smell.”

“I apologise for them. We’re here to listen.”

She curled her lips. “You’re spies, aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“Shlomo.”

“Solomon? Coming in peace, are you? Telling me your real name in a place like this can be a foolish thing. Are you sure it’s Solomon?”

“And what’s yours?”

“You can call me Zenobia.”

“And is that your real name?”

“I borrowed it from a girl I used to work with. Of course it’s my real name. The customers call me Aurora Pan-Nyches.”

“All-Night Dawn? I don’t believe you.”

“Very wise of you, Solomon.”

So we listened together. When I sat in the narrow space, my ear to the wall, she sat in front of me, listening too, a look of mischief and delight in her eyes. Then she raised her eyebrows and her cheeks dimpled. Her eyes were a deeper brown by far than the brown of her skin.

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