The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now animate. Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated incessantly. Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with suffusions of heat. Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way, Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death; but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein was immortal.
It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into decay. Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so ancient and utter a ruin. Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress and penned it into its dilapidated shell. It was a habit Cæsar's mind had of blocking people, things and himself. A creature of contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly, immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others, stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced the throne of the Cæsars. Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious, unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor in every phase of his many-sided nature. It is not recorded that any ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to respect him.
He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of late, Macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to those of vice-regent, and Cæsar returned from Capri, his retreat from the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
Beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance but for age and integrity. There walked Gallus who had followed Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army—and lived to refuse to be knighted. If Cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet. Flattery never passed their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not have improved. And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses, walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of dependable ruggedness.
After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths. Within lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the Lady Junia.
They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
A woman stepped out. White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. The rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly.
"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.
The woman approached and made obeisance.
"Humph! Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment. But he drew his old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.
"Greeting, sister," he said. "The gods attend thee."
"Thou art good, Augustus. Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied. She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips. The old man gazed at her with a wavering eye.
"Come closer. Art so gray?" he asked.
"White, Cæsar."
He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her hair. There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very strongly in contrast. But her eyes were still full and bright, even tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth. Age had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out hand of seventy years.
She was the noblest woman of her age,univira,—the widow of one husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,—in all things, the ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable in the vicious age of the Cæsars.
"Eh! White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through her locks with a movement that was almost tender. "And I am thine elder. Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am not a dead man, Antonia!"
"Nay, who says it, Cæsar? And it is not age that hath blanched me. I was gray at forty—much more gray than thou art now."
"No, no! Not age! Truly a woman's protest. But then, perchance not. Thy husband's death undid thee. How thou didst love him! Save for thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"
After a little he muttered to himself:
"Alas! What a name to conjure death! My son Drusus, thy spouse Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus. Dead! All! and in their youth. The very name hath a sinister look."
The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek. The widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.
"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked. "Not in these many years have I heard thee name him."
"No!" he answered shortly. "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I mean to have the soothsayers interpret."
"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.
"There is one, and it comes nightly. It is a Shade from Thanatos, which approacheth. I put the ægis into its dead hands, crown its death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again into the Shades—and after it passes all Rome, and the Empire of the Cæsars."
The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by tears. The unanointed Cæsars that had passed into the Shades had gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had passed with him. But she put off the encroaching lapse into retrospection.
"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir," she suggested.
The old emperor nodded eagerly. "It may be, it may be," he assented. "I have been pondering long upon the matter."
A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west. About them were spread the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen and questioned after things unknown. In their philosophy, life was all. After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just and the unjust were immersed eternally. But no youth, looking forward to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that these expended on the time after things were expected to end. The awe of the unexplored Hereafter—what a waste of universal, earth-old, intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!
Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:
"There is another—yet another dream. I cast dice with Three; three grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged. But let be, let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"
He sat up.
"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.
"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."
"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."
"Thou art a kind man, Cæsar. I came to speak of Agrippa."
"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in his voice and manner.
The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without advancing. She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk between the widow and the emperor.
Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when, after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should return to his old manner. She felt her way.
"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting. Thou and I remember him as the faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."
The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without telling expression.
"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued. "He hath walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick of it. Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him again. The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa, conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive. He wants to be examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly established."
"Well, well!" Tiberius said.
"I shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about her.
"Any mood is happy enough for the Jew," was the retort.
Antonia unmistakably eyed the old man.
"Say on, good Antonia," he urged uncomfortably. "I have not forsworn justice."
"Agrippa asks nothing more. His charioteer robbed him, and when he was captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerns thy welfare. It is simply a device to put off punishment. He hath appealed to thee and thou hast not yet heard him. The Herod is eager that the matter be settled and begs that the slave be heard at once."
"Eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled. "Leave it to a Jew to flourish his righteousness. If he is innocent, he can wait; if he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough. I owe him a sentence of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little Tiberius."
"And thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn justice!" Antonia exclaimed.
"Jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed. "Hither, Euodus!"
Junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part. She stopped again.
"How my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to Flaccus!" she said to herself. "Here must I stand idly by, while this new Penelope to a dead Ulysses works the Herod's ruin!"
Euodus bowed beside Cæsar.
"Bring me the Jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear. Bring him hither, and haste!"
The old man turned to Antonia.
"Go tell thy valiant Herod that he shall have justice. Justice! Say that. It may not please him so much to have that message."
The gilded lectica moved on. The widow went back to her litter and was borne away. Junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor.
"O lady," she said, looking after Antonia's litter, "it may be very superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues, but it is fatal for thy friends, I observe."
At the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of Tusculum, Euodus returned with Eutychus, whom Piso, at Agrippa's defiant instigation, had been forced to send to Tusculum to be available in event of Cæsar's summons.
Junia looked at Eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself. She had not agreed that Agrippa should be other than alienated from his wife. She was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from her chair. Even Flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose its effect, for a picture of Marsyas' suffering was a more distinct image. But one of the causes of Marsyas' concern, nay, the chief cause—the protection of Lydia to be achieved by the Herod's success—occurred to her in an evil moment. She turned her face away from the colloquy between Cæsar and the charioteer and studied the summer-green Alban Hills that shouldered the sky behind her.
Eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor.
"Speak, slave," Euodus ordered.
"O Cæsar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once I drove the Herod and Caligula, the Roman prince, to the Hippodrome in this place and they talked of the succession. And Herod said that he wished that thou wast dead and Caligula emperor in thy stead."
The emperor's eyes glittered.
"What else?" Euodus demanded.
"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear," Eutychus trembled.
"And what said Caligula to that?"
"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
"Nothing, lord!"
Euodus bowed to the emperor and waited.
"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said. Two of the prætorians led Eutychus away.
"Eheu!" Junia sighed. "I could have stared the knave between the eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath! Ai! Owl-faced Lydia! thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting their royal burden's humor to go on. But Tiberius shrank into the relaxation of thought. He had outlived every plot to assassinate him; he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil! He was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he was surfeited with it all. But here, now, was this precarious Herod, barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years, wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die! Tiberius was at a loss to know what to do with the man. The thought wearied him. He wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead of ten. What an officious creature Antonia had become!
Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went around, remounted their chairs and disappeared. The birds in the trees about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again. Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest bearer.
"To the palace," he said.
The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the lectica aroused Tiberius.
"Whither?" he demanded irritably.
"To the palace, Cæsar," Euodus answered.
"Did I command thee? To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was built.
The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round of masonry. The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons. But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.
Rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant as Cæsar's paludamentum. Inns and mile-stones along the viæ proved them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying for room had passed the walls and built its own characteristics—temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as far as Tusculum along the roads.
Lovelier beyond comparison than Rome's loveliest spots, it was small wonder that to fill their Augustan lungs with the freshness of the Campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city, which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation of Mephitis and the goddess Febris had been erected.
So daily groups of patricians collected at the Hippodrome of Tusculum, with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in the arena below.
The races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled. The gilded lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not to the amphitheater but to the arena. Slaves with blanketed horses and clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded ellipse within. The bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of the august visitor.
The eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully. Nothing was here to interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement. Nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against the call.
Presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw, within touch of his hand, Agrippa and Caligula side by side, talking to a gladiator. The emperor scowled and looked away. The bearers plodded on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side, neared the mouth of the cunicula.
Agrippa and Caligula had moved from their position and were there, with a notary taking down the terms of a wager.
Apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him.
Tiberius looked at him, then at Agrippa. His brows lowered more, this time with irritation. It seemed that action had been formulated by circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome prosecution.
He put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the Roman on the shoulder. The man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near bowed profoundly. If he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given opportunity.
"Bind that man, Macro," Cæsar said, nodding at Agrippa.
The lectica moved on. As it passed up the opposite side Macro crossed to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again.
"Cæsar's pardon, but whom am I to bind?" he questioned.
"That man," Tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the Herod.
"Agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed.
"I have said."
The lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back again to the cunicula. The few within the walls of the Hippodrome had gathered there in an interested and excited group. In the center stood Agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles. The charm and sparkle in his atmosphere were gone; even as Tiberius looked, he saw the cold, evil, vengeful countenance of the Asmonean Slave, the Terror of the Orient, Herod the Great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind the graceful features of his grandson. Tiberius was grimly satisfied; he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a preferrer of noble game.
On either side of the prisoner stood a Roman soldier; aloof and passive was Macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed Caligula.
As the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted Agrippa to come nearer the emperor.
"At Cæsar's command, I am arrested," he said evenly. "Will Cæsar grant me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?"
"Thy charioteer hath spoken, Agrippa," was the response. "The slave swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and Caligula to this place. Instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the succession. And thou madest moan that I was not dead so that Caligula could reign in my place!"
The jaws of many round about relaxed in horror. Agrippa's muscles made an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm. But the emperor caught the start.
"Forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make Antonia bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped.
"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate himself for offering a defense.
"Ah-r-r! Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled.
The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in his eyes. Cæsar nodded; that was better.
The prince's manacled hands clenchedThe prince's manacled hands clenched
The prince's manacled hands clenchedThe prince's manacled hands clenched
"Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir presumptive to the ax! Eh? Take him away! Macro, come thou to the palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!"
The gilded lectica moved on.
Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's chair, seized her arm.
"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said to her. "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow—or thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the crushing grip.
"Him or me!" she told herself. "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas. "But acquit me of blame. What could I do?"
"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.
Lydia went up on the housetop into the shade of the pavilion with the writing her father had put into her hand, and drawing the hangings on the east side of the pavilion to shut out the morning sun, sat down to read how Marsyas had revealed the evil tidings to the alabarch.
It was the first moment of rest she had had since the messenger had arrived at daybreak with the letter which had flung Cypros into paroxysms of suffering and desperation. Now that the unhappy princess had yielded to the benign influence of a narcotic simple, Lydia had time for her own thoughts.
It was not the same Lydia that had danced on the Temple of Rannu. Spiritual change as infallibly marks the countenance as physical change. The last of the half-skeptical, half-philosophical tolerant equanimity was gone from her face; the self-reliance had been transformed into a look of faith and believing, and a certain tranquillity, no less sweet and unshaken because it was sorrowful, no less patient because its hope was faint, made her forehead placid.
She read:
ROME, Kal. Jul. X, 790.
"TO THE MOST EXCELLENT ALABARCH, ALEXANDER LYSIMACHUS, GOVERNOR OF THE JEWS OF ALEXANDRIA, GREETING:
"It is my grief to inform thee that at the command of Cæsar, my lord and patron, Herod Agrippa, hath been confined in the Prætorian Camp awaiting sentence for utterances pronounced treasonous to Cæsar.
"Immediately after the prince's arrest, one of the ladies of Cæsar's train was stricken by an illness, resulting from the malarious airs of the Campagna, and the emperor ordered the immediate return to Capri.
"Inquiry among the emperor's ministers discloses the fact that he left no explicit instructions concerning the execution of a sentence upon Agrippa. It is noted in Rome that, owing to the multiplicity of his duties and the weariness of his mind, the emperor forgets readily, and is not pleased to be reminded of that which he hath forgotten to perform. Wherefore, if it please God to erase Agrippa from his mind, it shall be seen to, here in Rome, that no one recall the unfortunate prince to Cæsar's attention.
"Canvass among the fellows of Agrippa conducted by certain powers in the state reveals that the movement against the prince did not have its inception in Rome; however, many were not unwilling to have it come to pass because of the prince's aggressive political preferences. But now that he is at the edge of ruin, the insignificant activity in the capital hath fallen inert; those who contributed to it are alarmed, for the accomplishment of Agrippa's death will inevitably revert upon the heads of them who endangered him, should Caius Caligula be crowned.
"The movement against the prince, consummated by the charioteer Eutychus, had its inception, as I have said, not in Rome. The man stole of his master's wardrobe and ran away. When he was apprehended he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerned the life and welfare of Cæsar. Piso, city prefect, bound the man and sent him to Tusculum, where, by the solicitations of Antonia, who was commanded by Agrippa, the emperor heard the charioteer's charge.
"Thou and I know, good my lord, that Eutychus is too clumsy a villain, too much of a coward, to invent and push this bold work himself, without support. Wherefore, I and others are convinced that he must have been inspired and aided by some secret and shrewd enemy outside of Rome. If the proconsul of Egypt is not yet informed of this disaster, do not trouble him with the information!
"It may assist thee to know that Eutychus, given ten stripes as earnest of Cæsar's respect for him, and turned loose, eluded mine and Caligula's vengeance and immediately took ship for Alexandria. Expect him in the Brucheum.
"Know this, also. If Cæsar forget and Agrippa live on, this enemy will grow restive and bestir himself again, wherefore it is the duty of them who love the prince to watch for any coiling which prepares for the stroke.
"For thine own comfort and for the comfort of his unhappy princess, I add here, though in peril to the prince's benefactor and to myself, that Agrippa's prison discomforts are alleviated, and kind usage secured him by the generous distribution of gold among them who surround him. It is not a difficult matter to secure him comparative comfort.
"Silas and I daily come to him with fresh clothing, and abundant food: he hath his own bedding and his daily bath. Through the influence of the prætorian prefect, obtained at great price by Antonia, none is permitted to pronounce Agrippa's name outside the camp, on pain of extreme punishment—a clever pretense at abhorring a traitor which aims only at his defense.
"Thy part is to quiet, within thy powers, any work in Alexandria which may lead to Cæsar's remembering Agrippa.
"I have closed the prince's residence, dispersed his slaves among the families of his friends, and with Silas I am living under the roof of Antonia, in whose care I am permitted to receive letters. The Lady Junia is at Capri at my solicitation, pledged to do a woman's part in the protection of Agrippa.
"May the God of our fathers arm thee."Peace to thee and thine."MARSYAS."
Lydia sighed and let the writing drop into her lap.
"I can not hope, my Marsyas," she said to herself, "if thou art schooled in the understanding of women by Junia!"
The Roman tincture was patent in the letter, but the Jewish manner, Jewish penetration, and the Essenic coldness were strong and unaltered. His well-beloved and unchanged hand had pressed all the surface of the parchment, but she did not lift it to her lips. There had been no word beyond the general greeting to her as the family of the alabarch, and proud, even in her sorrow and the new-found humility, she saved her endearments.
After a moment of further thought, she was aroused by the rattle of wheels which came to an end before the porch of her father's house. She arose and going to the parapet looked over. Justin Classicus' chariot stood there. She caught the last flutter of his garments as he disappeared under the roof of the porch.
She went back to her place and waited for a servant to announce the guest. But Classicus lingered. The alabarch was not like to be telling him the account of Agrippa's latest misfortune.
She put away Marsyas' letter and gazed at the Synagogue immersed in the golden flood of Egyptian sunshine. She had not ceased to love it, nor to attend it with all maiden fidelity since she had followed Jesus of Nazareth, but it seemed to love her less, to throw a shadow darker, but less benign, over her, as she approached its giant gates. Saul of Tarsus whom she had feared for Marsyas' sake was a hidden menace now in its great angles, a threat in its rituals, a brooding danger held up only so long as she hid in deceit. She felt unutterably lonely and friendless.
Presently Classicus came up unannounced. She knew at a glance that he had learned from some source of Agrippa's misfortune, and wondered for a moment if her father had forgotten Marsyas' charge.
"Alexandria hath heard of Agrippa's disaster," he began, as he seated himself beside her, "and I came to offer my consolation and my aid."
Then Flaccus already had the news!
"I would thou couldst aid us, Justin. Not now is anything more precious than help, and nothing less possible."
"And to say lastly," he continued, looking into her face, "that I deplore that haunted look in thine eyes, Lydia. What does it mean?"
"That I grow older, wiser, sadder—and less fortunate."
"Thou shouldst study the philosophy of the Nazarenes," he declared. "I find that much of their teaching, stripped of its frenzy and reduced to the dignity of pure language, hath much comfort in it."
"Does it promise that sorrow will not come to them who espouse it?" she asked, looking away.
"Nay, but it preaches universal love. Could I teach thee that, sorrow should never approach thee or me henceforth!"
"I fear thou dost not understand them," she said dubiously.
"Not wholly," he admitted. "I have not yet been able to agree with them, that I, Justin Classicus, scholar and Sadducee, should find it in my heart to love a crook-back shepherd that speaks Aramaic, rejoices on conchs, relishes onions and is washed only when the rains wet him."
He smiled, and Justin Classicus' face was helped by a smile. Mirth possessed him entirely, cast up a transitory flush in his cheeks and lighted torches in his eyes. But Lydia looked across the Alexandrian housetops.
"Why dost thou seek this new philosophy, Justin?" she asked.
"To see if it be safe enough heresy to teach thee," he returned. "If it be, thou shall learn it, for in its creed of universal love, I put mine only hope that thou shalt come to love me!"
"Learn the universal love for thyself, Justin: learn to love the shepherd and thine enemy—learn it in all truth, and thou mayest be content with that, and no more!"
"The Lord forbid!" he cried. "If that should come to pass, learning this new philosophy, I pause, even now!"
"Enemy?" he repeated, after a little in a gentler tone. "Save another hath possessed thy heart, I have no enemy—the Nazarenes recommending that one leave them out of one's catalogue of fellows!"
"Canst thou not hold off thy hand, even from an enemy? Hath thy search after their philosophy taught thee so much?"
He looked at her face, and saw thereon something to follow.
"I can—be bought," he answered softly.
She remembered his part in the ambuscade the night of the Dance of Flora, and her face paled a little.
"It is not the Nazarene way," she replied unreadily.
"Nay, but if the demand be great enough, any method must serve. Shall I name my price?" His voice was clear and illuminating.
She arose and moved over to one of the columns, and leaning against it gazed across toward the blue sparkle of the New Port. She felt the strength of his fortification, the extent of his power over her. Not any of the many things she had hidden from all but Marsyas were unknown to him!
She turned to him with appeal in her eyes, but he laughed very softly, and wrapped the kerchief skilfully about his head. His composure terrified her. He held out his hand.
"Think," he said, "and to-morrow or the next to-morrow, but soon, thou wilt tell me. Meanwhile I shall tell thy father that I have spoken with thee."
He took her fingers and kissed them.
"Farewell. And let the Nazarenes persuade thee, if I can not!"
A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from before the alabarch's porch. Then with slow, weary steps she went down into the house. She would seek out her father, and discover what to expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod. Not until then would she entertain the suggested sacrifice which Classicus had so deftly demanded.
But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not from courtesy, but because she was a consideration. She took her place on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to efface herself.
Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of the sentence. The old tone of assumed cordiality was gone. Flaccus had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
"The gossip of the lady's arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir. She would be there engaging Antonia's attention, which should be devoted without lapse, in other directions."
"The Herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus, thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of somber eyes to the proconsul's face.
"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the beginning."
"At my suggestion. Then thou canst release her at my suggestion—and if the loan sits roughly on thy conscience we shall call it a gift at this late day."
"If it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the talents. It is the lady who concerns us now. I would be plain with thee; I should reproach myself did I let her proceed out of my house."
"Call the lady," Flaccus commanded. "We will lay the matter before her."
"She sleeps," Lydia said.
"I bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply. "Bring her hither."
"On one promise," Lydia said.
"What?"
"That I and my servants alone shall accompany her to Rome."
Flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter. Lysimachus sat without movement. He knew that his daughter had seen at once that which he had instantly divined—that Flaccus had no intention of sending Cypros to Rome.
"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans thereafter."
Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her—doubtless before Flaccus, with unimaginable results. The alabarch looked down on his daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited for her answer.
"My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations with thee and this unfortunate family long enough. Perchance we erred. At best it may no longer be maintained. Though the Lady Cypros is uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of Rannu's Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth to do with his princess."
There was silence. Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's curls.
"Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou hast kept thy arms concealed. Yet I will take them up, now." He raised his eyes to Flaccus.
"Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?"
After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more than ever composed.
"Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked.
"Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of the honor of their women."
"I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply. "I am only diverted. But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon the Regio Judæorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a protector or a roof-tree. She had much better go—to Rome!"
He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the alabarch could conduct him to the door.
Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other. Their thoughts reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the results of the climax. Then the alabarch opened his arms to his daughter and she slipped down on his breast.
"Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned of this?" he urged.
It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source of her information than to the information itself.
"I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he pretended to love, before the world!"
"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of many evils had stunned her resourcefulness.
"Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded.
"And then?"
"Fight! He can invent twenty excuses to take Cypros from me by law and against her will."
"Then we must hide her and speedily!"
The alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks.
"Now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered.
Lydia looked up after a little thought.
"The Nazarenes," she ventured timidly.
"What! The apostates! The community is the most perilous spot in Egypt!"
"Here in Alexandria, of a truth," Lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and shepherds as a running vine. Many are living about over the Delta. One of them will shelter her, I know. She will go when we have told her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of wayside mendicants!"
The alabarch arose and set her on her feet.
"Haste, then, Lydia; no time is to be lost!"
But before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and put them about his neck.
"Father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of Classicus."
The pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a shaken light.
"He is jealous," he answered, "of Marsyas! Hath he cause, my daughter?"
Lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast.
"Marsyas is an Essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her curls and was filled with pity.