XXXVIIITHE POISONER
Deborahretired to the roof of the house. She gazed long to the west.
"Caleb, do you hear any sounds far away?"
"None, but there is a great mist rolling up from the Great Sea over Sharon, and up the mountains toward our city. Now a wind from the east rushes against the mist. I think it is a wind. Can you see a wind, sister?"
"One can see the dust it drives."
"That's it; a little cloud of dusty wind. And it drives away the mist. The mist rolls down the long hills and away—away. Now it is lost in the Sea. The dusty wind is Judas, I know."
A servant brought to Deborah a basket of fruit. Ripened pomegranates glowed ruddy beside tawny oranges in a bed of white blossoms which loaded the air with delicious spicery. Cakes of figs compressed with almonds were scattered through the tempting heap.
Caleb caught the odor; his face became a resistless appeal, which his sister answered by putting into his hand the largest of the luscious fruits.
Deborah recalled the servant to ask the donor of the fruit. Ephraim could not say, as it was brought to him by one of the Greek guards in the court who had taken it in at the gate. Deborah examined the basket, and recognized the pattern of its inwovenwithes as one that the Princess had taught Lydia, the wife of Menelaos, and herself to make. She quickly turned to Caleb.
"Do not eat, my child."
But the child had eaten. Almost immediately he fell sick. His face became ashen pale.
Deborah carried the lad to his bed, and laid him there. The physician Samuel was sent for in eager haste; but that worthy man was beyond the city, in the labor which absorbed him day and night, as the case of no single patient could have done—the critical condition of his nation. To whom could she turn?
"Call Captain Dion," she bade Huldah.
A long time Dion watched the face and felt the hands of the child.
"I know well these signs," he said. "And good reason have I to remember them. When a lad I fell sick very much as Caleb has done. The physician of King Philip of Macedonia, at whose court I served as page, declared my illness to be due to a peculiar poison concocted by Alexandrian alchemists. For weeks I lay, while the Fates' scissors fretted my life thread. Again, when I was just a man, a similar disorder came upon me. This time I was a soldier in King Perseus' guard. But for the skill of a certain physician, Theron, an adept in the arts of the poisoner, and on that account retained in the King's household, I had certainly perished. This second secret attempt upon my life led Theron to counsel me to forsake Macedonia. This I could not do. I loved my King Perseus, and stood with him, until some four years ago he was overthrown by the Romans in that terrible fight at Pydna. But evenin this remote region I seem to be pursued by the poisoner, for I doubt not that this which Caleb has taken was intended for myself, since it is known that I am here."
"But," said Deborah, "this basket is like the handiwork of the Princess."
"Of the Princess!" cried Dion, examining the basket. "You are right; this is such work as one finds in the bazaars at Antioch. Deborah, this was intended for neither Caleb nor me, but for yourself."
He noted more closely the fruit. "These fruits are not all such as grow in these lands. The figs and almonds thus pressed together I have seen only in the capital, and one place else—in the house of Menelaos. It is a favorite with the Priest. Deborah, I see through the damnable plot. Menelaos, to accomplish his purpose on the property of Elkiah, must leave no scion of the house alive. I swear that this is that villainous Priest's design, executed too, by a practised poisoner, and she—Heaven forbid that I make a false charge!—she is none other than the Princess. Before the sun sets I will probe the secret with my knife, though it lies at the bottom of this Priest's black heart."
"Give the child tepid water," he added. "Watch him that he does not sleep; but that I think will not be possible for some hours yet. The poison rather stimulates wakefulness until the life is burned out with its fires. I have at the Citadel some of the medicine Theron bade me always keep with me."
As Dion left the apartment a great uproar rose in the streets. Cries filled the air.
"The Jews have fled before Gorgias. They are being driven into the city."
"The Jews are not fleeing, sister," said Caleb. "They have been pursuing. I see a mighty eagle. He has swirled above a flock of doves, but, quick as the lightning flashes, a little bird has darted upon him. He has mounted upon the eagle's back. His beak is sharper than a sword, and cuts the eagle through. The great bird falls. Surely the little bird is Judas."
Whether Caleb's vision was the vagary of his fever-heated brain, or a true prognostication from inner sight granted him in compensation for his outer blindness, one may not say, since we have not ourselves passed through the borderland of the world of sense.