She strove to stop him in his resolution, but he kissed her, and, leading her to the foot of the well-remembered stairs, whispered his good night.
By noon the following day, all Alexandria roared with the news that Agrippa had returned a king!
The Regio Judæorum lost its repose. Certain irrational of the inhabitants displayed carpeting and garlands in honor of the Jewish potentate, within their boundaries. But others, instructed by instinct, closed the fronts of the houses and laid their treasure within grasp.
By the advice of Marsyas, Agrippa had caused his ship to bring to, outside the harbor, and await the dropping of darkness before he came ashore. The few hours he spent in Alexandria had been passed under cover, and none without the alabarch's household was aware of his presence in the city. The newly-crowned Judean king found it difficult to repress his desire for ostentation, and when Marsyas' plan for secrecy miscarried at last, Agrippa was irritated because he had been deprived of a longed-for opportunity to astonish the Alexandrians.
"But who could have told it?" he asked, with ill-concealed satisfaction.
Marsyas' lips curled.
"Classicus," he said.
Before the porch of the alabarch's house groups of people came to stand and discuss the fortunes of the Herod. The sounds, never congratulatory, began to change in temper. As the day grew, numbers began to accumulate and hang like sullen bees buzzing insurrection. Though they themselves were mongrels cast out of twenty subjugated kingdoms and bullied into unspeakable servitude by the tyrant Rome, Prejudice, unarmed with argument and speaking in dialect, arose and rebelled at Alexandria entertaining a Jewish king.
Toward sunset a group of empty curricles and chariots came and stood before a certain house, the last in the Jewish district, facing the Gentile environs of the water-front. Had any cared to remark, it might have been observed that this house could be reached from the alabarch's by abandoned passages and private walks, a series of Jewish courts and stable-yards, without exposing any who went that way to the Gentile eye. After a while, a body of Roman guards emerged from nowhere and arrayed themselves alongside the vehicles. Presently, groups of slaves bearing burdens, followed by a party of high-class Egyptians, mounted the chariots and without hesitation the procession took up movement toward the harbor.
But an angle in the streets brought them upon the Gymnasium. It was built in a square of sufficient size to receive the crowds that usually attended the contests of the athletæ, and there thousands were assembled to do Alexandrian honor to a Jew.
The daylight was still on the streets, and Marsyas, in the guise of a charioteer, driving the horses of the foremost car, observed that each of the mass was busy with his own noise, and apparently unsuspecting the coming of Agrippa. So he signed to the centurion in charge of the prætorian squad to make way with as little ostentation as possible.
At the porch before the Gymnasium, the crowd was most packed, loudest and most entertained. A naked, deformed, apish figure stood on a pedestal from which a statue had fallen and had not been replaced. A wreath of rushes had been twisted about the degenerate forehead, a strip of matting had been bound with a tow-cord about his middle; in his hand was a stalk of papyrus with the head broken and hanging down.
On their knees about the base of the plinth were half a score of youths from the Gymnasium, groaning in tragic chorus, the single Syriac word:
"Maris!Maris! Lord! Lord!"
Loudly the crowd roared its part, with voices raucous and hoarse from much abuse:
"Hail, Agrippa! King of the Jews!"
Agrippa's chariot, following the way the centurion had quietly opened through the crowd, attracted little attention and the half-light of the twilight did not reveal his features, which he had been led further to conceal by an Egyptian cowl. A long white kamis covered his dress. But his eyes fell upon the idiot; he caught the mockery and its meaning from the crowd.
A quiver of rage ran through his frame. Laying hold of the Egyptian smock, he tore it off and threw it fairly into the faces of those nearest him; the white cowl followed, and he stood forth like a new-risen sun in a tissue of silver, mantled with purple, his fillet replaced by a tarboosh sewn with immense gems.
Defiance and insult and daring could not have been embodied in a more effective act. The continuous tumult burst into a yell of fury. In a twinkling his chariot was hemmed in and blocked and the raving rabble reached out to lay hands on him.
Marsyas, seeing destruction in Agrippa's recklessness, shouted to the centurion, who responded by hurling his prætorians, with broadsword and spear into the mob.
The protection of Cæsar, thus evidenced, beat back the astonished herd as a charge of cavalry might have done, but it fringed the lane opened before the royal Jew and raged.
Thereafter every inch of the way was contested.
Not even a show of interference was made by municipal authorities. Instead, here and there, soldiers of the city garrison could be seen, singly or in groups, as spectators and applauding. The riot began to take on the appearance of a holiday, for groups of upper classes began to appear on housetops, stairs and porches of houses, where they made themselves comfortable and listened to the demonstration as they were accustomed to watch contests in the stadia. Below in the long way toward the harbor-front, the lawless of any class indulged their love of disorder and amused the aristocrats.
The fugitives were almost in sight of the forest of masts which marked the wharves, when Marsyas detected a change in the tone of the tumult.
Derision and revilement began to lose impetus, flagging in the face of a freshened uproar of another temper, beginning far behind and sweeping down the street after the fugitives. It was savage, bloodthirsty and menacing. Out of the inarticulate volume he caught finally shouts about the Jews and Flora; next, about the dance of Flora; after that the whole declaration, sent thundering, like a sea over winter capes, that the dancing Flora was a Nazarene and the daughter of the alabarch!
Marsyas' face, turned toward Agrippa, was ghastly. The Herod felt the first quiver of terror he had experienced in years. He reached toward the lines, meaning to give Marsyas opportunity to return to the Regio Judæorum. But Marsyas was shouting mightily to the centurion to charge the crowds before them. The prætorian heard and his men presented a double row of spears and rushed. The lesser mob ahead broke, and Marsyas cried back to Cypros' charioteer.
The next minute with desperate mercilessness he had loosed a long plaited whip like a crackling flame upon the necks of his horses.
The terrified beasts leaped; the car lurched and headlong they plunged into the mass before them. Right and left the rawhide played, over faces, shoulders and lifted arms, searing and scarring wherever it touched. With grim satisfaction, the two within the chariot felt at times that the car mounted and toppled over prostrate rioters, like sticks in the roadway. The jam became panic and flight, and the horses took the free passage, mad with desire to get away from the stinging torment that harassed them.
The driver of Cypros' car closed in quickly with its following of curricles, and kept close behind the flying chariot, but the prætorians, out-distanced, contented themselves by following through short ways, and the riot was left behind.
At the wharf the maddened animals could not be stopped until they had been circled again and again. But hardly had the wheels ceased to move, when Marsyas leaped to the ground, and, flinging the lines to a slave, put up his hands to Agrippa.
"As the first debt to thy manhood and to the alabarch forget not this opportunity to help him! Hear them! They want Jewish blood; Lydia's blood! There is none in Alexandria to stay them! Help, my lord! Beseech Cæsar in thy people's behalf, as I beseech thee now! Answer, answer!"
"I hear, Marsyas," Agrippa responded, "and by all that I hold sacred, I promise thee Flaccus' end! God help thee! Farewell!"
Pausing only for the word, Marsyas turned and ran with frantic speed back into the city. He saw, at every step, that which made his heart chill in his bosom. The tide of the riot had turned, and that which was not already pouring in upon the Nazarenes, was rushing into the Regio Judæorum.
The cluster of vagabonds hanging before the alabarch's mansion stayed no longer after the breezes brought the first sound of tumult which announced a rarer sport elsewhere. In a twinkling the Regio Judæorum was silent and deserted.
Except for the gusts of far-off turmoil, the cooing of pigeons in towers, the clashing of palm-leaves, the creak of crazy gates in the wind, the casual calling of Numidian cranes or the crowing of poultry were the only sounds in the quarter—lonesome, nature sounds, signals of a householder's absence.
But it seemed as if the Regio Judæorum listened and waited.
After Agrippa's departure, the alabarch came into his presiding-room, without purpose and visibly uneasy. Lydia followed him, and, at a look from her father, came close to his chair and mingled her yellow-brown curls with his white locks.
The silence over the quarter had become oppressive and the slightest break would have been no less grateful than distinct, when it seemed that cautious footsteps pattered by without.
The two stirred and listened.
After a moment, they heard others, very swift and soft, as if many were running by a-tiptoe. There were whispers and rustlings, excited words cried under the breath.
The two in the presiding-room looked at each other. Had the vagabonds returned to their place for mischief, outside the alabarch's mansion?
Lysimachus stepped to the windows and listened. But Lydia stood still, dreading without understanding that which he might hear.
East and west, far and near, sounds were drifting in and passing toward the New Port, sounds as if a multitude hastened in one direction. Above these stealthy, fugitive, whispered noises, there came freshened uproar from pagan Alexandria, swift, high, relentless and carrying like fire on a wind.
As they stood thus, perplexed and alarmed, Vasti appeared like a shadow out of the dusk and caught the alabarch's arm.
"It is come!" she hissed with compelling vehemence. "To the Synagogue! Fly! For the hosts of Siva are upon you even now!"
Lysimachus grasped the grill of the window, and turned slowly toward his daughter.
"Lydia?" he asked helplessly.
The girl came to him, and Vasti began to motion her toward the street.
"What is it? What passeth?" the alabarch insisted, unable to act without perfect conception of the conditions he had to fight.
Lydia's eyes, fixed on her father's face, deepened with misery and widened with suffering. The hour had fallen! She was to be the outcast and the abomination at last.
"They accuse me," she said, "of being a Nazarene; that I committed sacrilege, to hold off the mob from Rhacotis—that I was the Dancing Flora!"
The alabarch put his thin hands to his forehead, as if to ward off the conviction, which all the fragmentary intimation against Lydia, and her own words conjoined, threatened to establish in him.
"Is it so, my daughter?" he asked in a benumbed voice.
Cause was submerged in effect; she felt less fear of the confession than of her father's suffering. In the appreciable interval his figure shriveled; age and the encroachment of death showed upon him. The atmosphere of the magistrate, the courtier and the aristocrat dissolved under the anguish of a father and the horror of a Jew. He had surrendered his two sons, Tiberius and Marcus, to paganism; in Lydia, he had reposed the unwatchful faith, that had permitted his other children to apostasize under his roof. He had believed the more in her, and the shock was the greater, therefore.
"Let it be the measure of my conviction, my father," she said sadly, "that I did this thing in the knowledge that I might forfeit thy love!"
He made no movement; his face did not relax from its stunned agony. Lydia awaited its change with flagging heart-beat.
But the thunder of menace from the Gymnasium square rolled in again through the streets of the Regio Judæorum. The alabarch heard it. Up through the mask there struggled not rebuke and condemnation, but the terror of love fearing for its own. He caught Lydia in his arms and turned his straining eyes toward the windows. But the bayadere waited no longer for the arousing of his faculties. She seized his arm and thrust him toward the vestibule.
"Awake! Get you up and be gone! Will you wait to see her perish?"
She did not stop until she had pushed them through the porch into the streets.
"To the Synagogue!" she commanded last, and disappeared as she had come.
All the Regio Judæorum, as far as the Brucheum on the south and the tumble and wash of the Mediterranean on the north, was pouring through the streets toward the New Port.
The alabarch's own servants went hither and thither, knocking at doors, from which other servants presently issued to speed with the alarm over the yet unwarned sections nearer the Synagogue.
After a moment's waiting until the light airs cleared the daze that enmeshed his brain, the alabarch took Lydia under his cloak and fled with his people toward their refuge.
As he went, doorways about them were giving up households, bazaars and booths were emptying of their patrons and proprietors; workshops, their artisans and apprentices; schools, their readers and pupils; the counting-room, the rich men and the borrowers; the squalid angles, the outcast and the beggar. The oppression of terror and the instinct for silence weighted the darkening air; the twilight covered them, and hostile attention was yet far behind them.
So they came: the slaves with marks of perpetual servitude in their ears, and ladies of the Sadducees that had rarely set foot upon the harsh earth; figures in Indian silks and figures in sackcloth; fugitives to whom fear lent wings and fugitives to whom flight was bitterer than death; families and guilds by the hundreds, hurrying together; companies of diverse people separated from their own; sons carrying parents and neighbors bearing the sick; friends forgetting attachments and foes forgetting feuds—until the streets became veritable rivers of running people. And so they went, crowding, pressing, contending, but passing as silently as forty thousand may pass, toward the Synagogue, which was sanctuary and stronghold for them all.
The keepers of the great gates were there, and the huge valves stood wide. The alabarch's old composure reasserted itself, as, amid the panic of his people, he realized their want of leadership. He stepped to one side of the nearest gate, and stood while he watched each and every Jew rush into the darkness and disappear under the great pylons of the Synagogue. Lydia, whom he would have sent in at once, clung to him, and together they stood without.
Meanwhile, out of the distant Brucheum, there came a snarl of monstrous and terrifying proportions. The mob was gaining strength.
The last of the Jews fled praying through the giant gates and pressed themselves into the shelter of the Synagogue. The keeper looked at the alabarch. He lifted his arm, and Lydia and the keeper and he, shutting away, as best they might, the noise of the threatening city, listened, if any belated fugitive came through the dark.
The sound of footsteps approached; a body of people, strangers to the alabarch, appeared; Lydia made a little sound, and moved toward them.
"We also are beset," the foremost said, "can we enter into the protection of the Synagogue?"
"Haste ye, and enter!" the alabarch answered.
And after the hindmost, he and Lydia passed into the sanctuary.
The keepers swung the great valves shut, and the last sound they admitted was a ravening howl, as Alexandria hurled itself into the empty streets of the Regio Judæorum.
Until this time, Lydia had been a part of the unit of terror and self-preservation, but the hurry of the flight had ceased and the wait for events had begun. Then ensued moments for individual ideas. Thus far she had heard no murmur against her. Fear of the Alexandrians had outmeasured the Jews' indignation, or else they had believed the informer to be the father of lies.
There was the never-failing lamp on the lectern, but its light penetrated no farther than the immediate precincts of darkness. The interior was so vast that its great angles melted into shadow. The immense area of marble pavement was cumbered with an army of huddled shapes, and when portentous red light began to sift down through the open roof it fell upon uplifted faces, ghastly with fear, upon bare arms, white and soft or lean and brown, upstretched in supplication. But neither moan nor murmur arose among them who waited upon siege.
Meanwhile the roar of violence encompassed and penetrated all portions of the quarter. Great lights began to mount and redden the sky as torches were applied to houses looted of their riches. The invasion had met no obstacle and the whole region was a-swarm.
Presently, close at hand, the full bellow of freshly-discovered incentive arose, mounting above all other noises until even the Jews, imprisoned within walls of granite, heard it.
"The Jews! the Jews! The Synagogue!"
Involuntarily there arose from the lips of the forty thousand a great moan, muffled, unechoing and filled with terror.
The alabarch stood by Lydia, with his thoughts upon the strength of the Synagogue and the hardihood of the prisoners. But the weight of culpability was heavy upon Lydia; in her great need and longing for the comfort of his confidence, she crept closer to her father and clung to his arm.
"Naught but a ram or ballista can force these gates!" he said. "And we are forty thousand. Alas, that the spirit of Joshua the warrior was not mixed with the spirit of Moses, who gave us the Law!"
The mob came on, now in distinct hearing of the imprisoned Jews. Tremendous trampling without on the stone flagging and dull, fruitless hammering on the valves announced the assault.
The Jews nearer the gates pressed away.
Without, indecision and tumult wrangled among innumerable voices. Great bodies began to shout as one, with mighty lungs:
"Bring out the woman! Give up the Dancing Flora!"
Lydia felt the alabarch tremble and presently the arm to which she clung withdrew from her clasp and passed around her, drawing her close.
"Impius!Insidiis!Succuba!O dea certe!" roared the mob.
But work was doing at the gates. There arose blunt pounding, slowly and heavily delivered as if a multitude wielded a ram. But the reports were too solid to indicate any weakness in the gates, and the keeper of the one attacked watched the sacred stone with a glitter of pride in his eyes.
Presently the hammering ceased.
"Yield us the woman!" the mob roared in the interval. "Give us the woman and save yourselves!"
Those about the alabarch, hearing the demand of the mob, turned great terror-strained eyes upon Lydia, and she hid her face in her father's shoulder.
The smell of burning pitch penetrated the interior; pungent smoke assailed the nostrils of the keeper, who smiled grimly, assuming that the mob hoped to burn the Synagogue.
But there followed an explosion of steam, split by a sharp report, and followed by a howl of exultation. The keeper with wild eyes sprang at the valve. Immediately the hammering of the ram reverberated through the gloom.
The alabarch understood. They were cracking the stone with fire and water and beating in the fractures with a ram.
Then the forty thousand within realized their extremity. The murmur increased to an even groan of terror, and here and there, as some more acutely realized the desperate straits, frantic screams would rive through the drone of misery.
Above it all the ram beat its sentence of doom upon the gate.
Splintering rock began to fall on the inner side of the assaulted portal. The keeper put his hands over his ears and turned away from the sight. Let but a breach be made wide enough to admit a hand to undo the bolts and hideous death would pour in upon the shuddering captives within.
Without, above the noise of the ram, the roar of the multitude continued:
"Give up the woman ere it is too late!"
Under the light of fires falling from above, hundreds of white faces in the mad mass turned toward Lydia.
A lozenge of stone large enough to admit a man's body shaped itself in the gate under the ram, and the next instant shot out and fell near the keeper. With it came a hoarse roar of triumph, drowning a scream of despair.
A dozen arms came through the opening and fumbled for the bolts.
The keeper seized the fragment of stone and hurled it at the intruding arms. It struck fair and with vicious force. Howls of pain went up.
The limp arms were dragged out and as others came in the keeper bounded to the gate and catching up his missile beat madly upon flesh and bone until the besiegers abandoned their search for the bolts.
The thunder of assault began again, for the gate could not hold long. The trapped victims shrieked and out of the mass fingers pointed at Lydia.
Suddenly, she stood away from her father's arm. Walking to one of the keepers of the unassaulted gates, she said to him:
"I am she whom they want without! Let me forth!"
A tall spare old man, one of the strangers who had entered last, approached her. But the girl motioned him aside and he made the sign of the cross over her.
Her father, watching her, did not realize until the keeper undid the bolts which held the wicket, or subsidiary gate in the large one, that Lydia meant to pass out into the night.
With a cry, he sprang after her.
A hush fell in the Synagogue.
The great stars were further withdrawn into the immeasurable arch of blue night; the winds had fled away into the ocean; the bay was angry with fire for leagues. The space before Lydia was open as far as the reader's stone of the proseucha, for the attacking party had demanded room for their proceedings. Beyond that was the front of the besiegers, a sea of bodies lighted by torches, tunics bloody with murder which had been done, mouths open, teeth shining, and eyes filled with the fury of bloodthirst.
As yet she was unnoticed, because the attention of the multitude was engaged with the assault upon the easternmost gate.
Lydia's mind did not direct her. It had sunk long ago under the stress of womanly terror. Only an involuntary obedience to an impulse conceived during the last conscious suggestions of her Nazarene faith, moved her toward the reader's stone, straight in the face of the multitude. She went as all young and tender martyrs have gone, with the spirit already lifted out of the body.
She mounted the rock; the alabarch, unable to reach her in time, unable to make her hear him, gave up with a groan of despair, and followed her.
Then the multitude saw and understood.
A yell of fury went up; a mass of innumerable heads and shoulders lurched toward her. Even the assailants at the gate dropped their ram to come.
Then up and out of it Marsyas leaped!
Lydia saw him, and a great light swept over her face. He had come to die with her, to sweeten the bitter martyrdom with the faithfulness of his love.
After Marsyas, the bayadere bounded, as if pitched from the front of the wave. Between the murdering front and the three on the stone she interposed herself, a creature of primal fury, terrible and ferocious. A torch was in her hand, the badge of eligibility, which had let her to the forefront of this mob, that received none but destroyers. But the sibilant utterance of the crimson flame, raking the air, and taller by half than the screaming fury that whipped it before her, was turned upon them that had kindled it.
She carried by its bail a great copper kettle filled with bitumen, but, as she planted feet upon the stone, she dropped her torch and, whirling upon the wave of fury, swept the full contents of the giant pot over every face and garment for yards about her. She caught up her torch; the looping flame uncoiled itself like a springing snake and shot down into the pack. Instantly there was a running flash, the rip of explosive ignition, and the breast of the riot turned, each a great towering flame, and drove itself into the heart of the oncoming thousands behind!
The rabble in cotton tunics had absolutely no defense against one another. The riot of bloodthirst turned instantly into panic and a revel of terrible death. The sound, the scene were indescribably awful.
In the hideous uproar that ensued, events followed swiftly. Vasti and her tall torch, in fearful fellowship, shrilled and spun on the rock in a frenzy of heathen triumph. Marsyas, for the instant stunned and scorched, flung his arm over his face, to shut out the horror. But the Jews, the instant the ram was dropped, realizing that their citadel was hopeless with breaches in its gate, and seeing a respite in the riot's attention upon Lydia, broke from the sanctuary and poured like a sea in flight into the open. The miraculous intervention of the bayadere gave them the opportunity to save themselves. But when Marsyas came to himself and sprang to take up Lydia, the inundation of fleeing Jews had swept over the reader's stone behind him, and Lydia was gone!
The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus' sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judæorum, into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear at guard and called "Halt!"
But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on the beleaguered quarter.
"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge, "challenging sand-columns, Sergius? Flaccus should know of thy thoroughness!"
The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon.
But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house.
Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally.
"Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue.
There was instant reply.
"Thou, Vasti! The Lord God be praised! What news?"
The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper:
"I have come, but not to abide," she said. "The Nazarenes took Lydia, and fled with her unto Judea!"
"Unto Judea! Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously.
"Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her. The Roman hath put forth all his soldiery to look for her. If she remained in Alexandria she would surely die!"
The alabarch moaned. The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia, and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender. The bayadere put her hands on him.
"Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!"
"Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably. "There she entereth into equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"
"But the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution," she said grimly. "Speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with no little mission. I come unto thee with cheer. Listen, and be of hope! The city of the Jews, here, is all but destroyed, but I buried thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels. Though they burn thy house, thou art still rich!"
"Buried them?" he repeated.
"In the earth of thy court-yard, ere the Herod departed, for the flame on the altar of Mahadeva burned crimson and murky! And I took certain of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the Nazarenes and bade them be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them! They went unto the Synagogue! They rescued her from the stone, after the sending of Vishnu upon the rabble! They went unto Judea with her—and I, Vasti, I did it, as Khosru, the Mahatma, bade!"
"Be thou blessed, Vasti; blessed be the day that I held up the hand that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of Sind! But—but—Marsyas—what manner of vessel carryeth him? How long! Alas, how wide the sea!"
"But the vengeance of the Divine hand is loosed! Sawest thou the destruction of the host, before thy people's Temple? The bay was black with them this morning and the vultures come even from Libya. Knowest thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against Lydia? I was in the city and beheld it! It was the charioteer, Eutychus! Him I kept in my sight, while I ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother, and when we stood upon the rock, I saw him! This morning, I sought for him before the Synagogue, and I found him!"
She brought her teeth together with a click.
"I burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she said sententiously.
"Canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence.
"All—so that Lydia be saved!"
"Thy spirit may be tried," she said. "The Roman hath commanded that ye be pent here until Lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and hunger and torture may persuade the Jews to give her up if she be hid among them. But I shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as I may learn."
She touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back:
"The time is not long; the Jewish king will not lag in his own requital! Be assured! I abide without these lines, since I can not help thee within! Farewell!"
At the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out without speaking.
"It would not be seemly to tell, now, that I saw Classicus' green and gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop."
A sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of the street; but he did not attempt to halt it.
Marsyas sought through the Nazarene settlements in Joppa, Anthedon and Cæsarea, but the people could not tell him of fugitive Alexandrians, who had with them a maid with yellow-brown hair. He went then to Ptolemais, and there, after days of patient search, discovered that three strange women, two men and a maiden of gentle blood, who were children in Christ, has passed through the city, from Alexandria to Jerusalem.
He did not pause to inquire after his former master, Peter the usurer, nor Eleazar, his steward. Instead he took the road, over which he and Agrippa had come long before, and hastened toward the City of David.
Within sight of the Tower of Hippicus, and the glittering Glory on the summit of Moriah, he came upon a group, in abas and talliths, sitting on the soil while they ate. He would have passed around them, without speaking, had he not seen the elder among them lift his hands and beseech the blessing of Christ upon the bread and water set before them.
Marsyas stopped, and waited with as much grace as possible until the meal was finished and the Nazarene thanks returned, before he approached.
"I behold that ye offer supplication to the Nazarene Prophet," he said to the elder, "and though I come unto you a faithful follower of the God of Abraham, I pray you, remember the charity ye assume, and give me aid!"
"We are children of Christ," the elder responded, "and brethren to all; wherefore speak, and if we can help thee, we dare not deny thee."
"I perceive that a bond of common acquaintance unites all of your belief; perchance certain Alexandrian Nazarenes with a maiden, who fled hither from the wrath of the Proconsul of Egypt, have come unto you for hospitality in Jerusalem."
"Save for the few apostles of the Church in Christ, who have hidden themselves, there are no Nazarenes in Jerusalem," the elder answered.
"No Nazarenes in Jerusalem!" Marsyas exclaimed, remembering Eleazar's estimation of the host of schism in the Holy City. "Yet, two years ago, they possessed the city from Ophlas to Bezetha."
"They have been scattered into far cities by the oppressor, or have passed through the dust of the stoning-place into the Kingdom of God!" he answered in awed tones.
The young man made a gesture as if he drew his hands quickly away from blood-stains, and a look of intense horror passed over his face.
"And Saul continueth to rage, unchecked?" he exclaimed, his old impatience with the passivity of the Nazarenes making itself felt once more.
"In the Lord's time, in the Lord's time, my son," the elder said mildly.
"I can not wait upon the Lord!" Marsyas cried. "The Lord gave me heart, feeling, intelligence and invention, for me to use to mine own aid! I have labored for two years to this end, and Herod, the king, will help me!"
"Not so, my son!" the Nazarene said gravely. "Build no hope for us, upon Herod the king, for he hath joined himself with the Pharisees, and he will not hinder the oppressor!"
"What?" Marsyas cried, growing black.
"A truth, my son!"
"But I crowned him!" Marsyas cried, clenching his hands. "I held off the hand of death from him, and despoiled my soul for his sake! I sold myself for him! By the Lord, if he help me not, I shall have back the life that I preserved to him!"
The Nazarene crossed himself quickly, and shook his head.
"Peace! Peace! young brother. Even the Law, for which thou art zealous, forbids thee to kill! Behold the vanity of laying up confidence in man! If thou hadst so built for the Master's favor, thou hadst not been forsaken, to-day!"
"Neither the God of Abraham, nor thy Prophet has shielded thee from the oppressor," he declared passionately. "Remember thy own words. But I will bring him down!"
"Build no hope upon Herod," the Nazarene continued, as if eager to stay Marsyas. "Whatever he promised thee, he knows that Saul standeth high among the Pharisees, whom the king would propitiate! He hath difficulty and prejudice to overcome, this grandson of an execrated grandsire—so build nothing upon the Herod!"
Was it possible that, after all his months of patient work and long-suffering, he had brought up at the point at which he had left off two years before? Was his punishment of Saul to be done, at his own risk, at last? He would see this altered Agrippa and learn for himself!
"I shall see this king and discover!" he declared.
"The king is not in Jerusalem," the Nazarene said. "He hath continued unto Antioch to despatch a petition to Cæsar!"
The young man's rage changed into dismay, but he made a last appeal.
"I seek my beloved," he said finally, in a helpless way. "She is a Nazarene and pursued by the powers of Rome! Even besides her peril of Saul, she is sought after by the mighty who would destroy her. If thou knowest of her—even where she might be in hiding, I pray thee, tell me, in the name of thy Prophet!"
"Who is she?" the Nazarene asked at once.
"She is Lydia Lysimachus, daughter to the alabarch in Alexandria."
"I turned such a maiden, and her protectors, away from the gates of Jerusalem, seven days ago. They were bidden to go to Damascus."
Marsyas pressed the Nazarene's hand to his lips, because his gratitude would not be expressed otherwise. Safe, then, for the moment, and out of reach of Saul of Tarsus!
"Do ye fare thither? even now?" Marsyas asked, eager to attach himself to the body of apostates, if they led him on to Lydia.
"Nay, we are certain of the faith on watch, lest any ignorant of the peril besetting the brethren should approach the city."
"Ye are close unto the oppressor," Marsyas said seriously.
"We abide in the will of the Lord."
Marsyas sighed. He had seen another, believing in the promise of the Lamb, go down unto death. The recurring thought of Stephen, never wholly forgotten, awakened in him another impulse. He would not go straightway to Damascus, and continue to retreat from Saul. The hand of the Lord had led him unto the Pharisee, and he would do that which lay nearest him.
"And when I come unto Damascus, how shall I find her?" he asked of the Nazarene.
"Go unto Ananias, a brother in the Lord, and tell him thy story. Lo, he is keeper of the Lord's flock, and filled with the Spirit. Thou wilt not ask in vain!"
"Thou hast my thanks, and my blessing!" Marsyas said. "And the forgiveness of the Lord cover you all!"
"Peace, young brother, and the love of Christ be with thee ever more!"
Marsyas went through the amber light of the late afternoon, toward the might of Hippicus and the majesty of the City of David.
He found, by inquiry among the Jews, that Agrippa had not lingered in Judea, having passed through Jerusalem to give commands concerning the preparation of his palace, to receive the homage of the people and to propitiate the Pharisees, before he went on to Antioch. It was readily told that the king was despatching messages to Caligula craving the punishment of Flaccus.
"But could not the king have despatched these messages from Jerusalem?" Marsyas asked.
The Jews smiled and laid fingers alongside their noses.
"He is a Herod, and not ashamed of display. He was ill-treated in Antioch, by the proconsul, there, in the days of adversity. Wherefore, in his purple and gold, with the favor of Cæsar behind him, he taketh advantage of an excuse to abash his old insulters!"
It was like Agrippa! But Marsyas was glad, even in the tumult of his sensations, that the Herod was pushing his work against Flaccus! At least, Alexandria should be safe for the alabarch. But to his mission!
It was still night in the City of David and the watcher on the pinnacle of the Temple had long to wait before the morning shone and the sky was lighted even unto Hebron. The greater stars sparkled like jewels in the cold heavens, and there were already many people in the blue-misted streets below. They were of all classes, but of one nation, one direction.
Straggling numbers joined the main body from each narrow passage which intersected the marble-paved roadway leading toward the splendid Tyropean bridge. It was a host, an army numbering thousands. But, foot planted on the solid masonry that accomplished the ravine by flying arches two hundred feet above the dark abyss, conversation left off. The company passed silent, except for the multitudinous and soft rustlings of garments and the chafing of feet upon rock. Far ahead the foremost were rising, an undulating sea of heads and shoulders, as the cyclopean stairs, a cold bank of white marble, broad and gentle of slope, climbed toward the Royal Porch.
As soon as the Tyropean bridge was passed, the Temple was shut off from view by the intervening cornices of the porch; and when the gate was reached, the stream of worshipers entered into the demesnes of the Holy House.
Tunnel-like and drafty, the open gate revealed an immense length of gloom, raftered and roofed with beams and vaults of darkness, upheld by double rows of dim columns of enormous girth. This, the Royal Colonnade, cloistered the Court of the Gentiles, through which the worshipers fared next.
It was a great quadrangle, paved with sun-colored marbles, open to the sky and having about it the characteristic exhilarating airs which inhabit the heights. Herod the Great spent princely sums upon this portion allotted to the Gentiles, for the simple purpose of flattering the pagan. Perhaps for no other reason than an expression of their displeasure did the Jews commit the sacrilege of commercialism in this spot. Here the money-changer, vender of sacrificial beasts, birds and wines made a busy market daily, for the indignation of the Nazarene Rabbi had driven them away for only so long as He watched. They returned when He had vanished, like flies to a honey-pot.
Here also awaited the Temple servitors to receive the unblemished offerings, the Shoterim to preserve order, the Levites of the gates and perchance the priests of the killing-pens and of the wood-chambers. Through the throng of attendants or venders, the worshipers continued, an uninterrupted stream of pilgrims, souls in distress, Pharisees and souls under vows, and all the class and kind that would be diligent for the Lord in the restful hours before daybreak. And the number was not large, in comparison to the host of Israel, for the Temple was builded to contain the voice of two hundred and ten thousand.
North of the center of the Court of Gentiles, the Temple stood. A rail set it off austerely from contact with the uncircumcised. Its relentless command of exclusion and its threat were set forth on stone, forbidding the admission of a Gentile on pain of death. But beyond, in mockery, rose the black bulk of Roman Antonia, the majesty of masonry upreared and prostituted to eavesdropping and espionage. Yet none who visited the Temple was instantly to be led away from its glory to meditate on its humiliation.
The worshipers passed around the angle of the structure to the east where the Gate Beautiful was hung.
There was a momentary slackening in the movement, for the gate was yet to be opened. But, preceding the foremost, twenty Levites passed up the flight of steps, and under the direction of a captain, laid shoulder to the valves and threw all their strength against them. There was a flash as the light of the coming dawn, concentrated and intensified, shifted across the Corinthian brass, and the Gate Beautiful swung inward.
At the head of the column a young man, in ample robes, with his kerchief skirts hanging close about his face, stepped aside from the line of advance. The crowd took up motion and went on.
Marsyas had washed himself in obedience to the Law; he had brought in his hand his trespass offering, and in his soul he was a Jew. But he stood now, and watched the fours of people climb the steps abreast, with no mood in his heart that a man should carry into a sanctuary.
Series after series passed under his sharp scrutiny—extremes of rank, of reputation, of calling and of kind. Minute after minute the long, silent procession tramped by him and was swallowed up in the gigantic gloom within. Ever the alert gaze, bright even under the obscuring shadow of the kerchief, slipped from rank to rank, and never once lingered in doubt. No one looked at him; every eye was down, for though, since the eighth day after his birth, no man in the long stream of worshipers had been ignorant of the Temple, it never failed to be a place of awe, half-love, half-terror.
The hindmost appeared at the angle of the Temple, moved in turn after their fellows, climbed the steps and disappeared.
Stragglers followed, in groups and singly, and finally Marsyas turned up the steps and followed the last within.
Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee, would have been among the earliest to arrive. Perhaps by special dispensation he had entered before the multitude and by another gate.
The keeper at the Gate Beautiful glanced at the young man's snow-white Essenic garments and at the stamp of Jewish blood on his face, and passed him without a word.
The Temple from the city had been a great glittering unit. But on approaching its details, they became bewildering.
Within was a tremendous inclosure, floored with agate, galleried with immense chambers which were screened with grills of beaten brass. The army of worshipers was reduced, in comparison to the space they entered, to a mere handful of pygmy, indistinct shapes, prostrate, kneeling, upright, silent, infinitesimal, moveless. At the extreme inner end of the men's court was a flight of fifteen semicircular steps which led up to the Gate Nicanor, now wide. It was hung in the middle of an open arcade—an altar screen no less a grace to the Temple because it might have embattled a fortress. Beyond it as the eye pierced the holy gloom, was a second tier of courts, less spacious than the first, but no less magnificent; after it, yet a third, and then a massive pile of ancient brass, stained and smoked, arose above all else before it. A tongue of clean blue unilluminating flame wavered in the center of its summit.
Beyond that, Marsyas' gaze did not travel.
Spiritual subjection surrounded him; from behind the lattice which screened the women's court in the lofty galleries, there came no sound. The twilight of early morning and the hush of a sanctity were supreme.
He crossed his hands upon his breast and let his head fall as the elders had taught him.
Others came to stand beside him, the order of worship proceeded, and the singing Levites ranged themselves on the steps before Nicanor, but he was plunged in his spiritual difficulty and oppressed by the care for himself and his own.
Finally there came a long, rich trumpet note above middle register; the voice of a brazen tongue singing through a horn of silver. It was not sudden. Beginning as the sound of wind on a fine wire, it ripened in tone as it grew in volume till it achieved the color, the shape of harmony, the very fragrance of music. As it diminished, those who listened caught the sound of a second note—the voice of a twin trumpet, save that the tones issued in the molds of enunciation. It was one singing among the Levites, as impossible to discover as to pick out the inspirited pipe in an organ.
"The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein—"
It was the voice of a young enthusiast, with the faith and spiritual uplift of patriarchal years, housed in a frame of youth—the voice of a creature of trance and frenzy, a martyr-elect from birth.
But as he clung to his final syllable in a vibrato of fervor, a second singer, duplicating the note in barytone, took up the second verse, and carried it with the ease and repose of one filled with content, health and the ripeness of years, of one who is the founder of a house, the possessor of goods and a power among his fellow men. And his voice was rich, level as the note of a 'cello, tender because it was strong, persuasive because it was believing:
"For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods—"
Wresting the word from him, the tenor again on his altitudes of ecstasy flung out the inquisition:
"Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?—"
He made answer to himself with the barytone, but there was a third now singing, and his voice arose out of their attendance as a great, white, solemn, night-blooming flower might rise out of leafage.
"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully."
The young fanatic might sing with the fervor of his bigotry, the contented man from the comfort in his heart, but this one, making answer, now, sang as one who was experienced and understood as the others could not. It was deep bass, too deliberate to be flexible, too profound to be hurried, and withal a great bell booming in a dome. And like a bell in travail under each stroke of its hammer, each word, in the full poignancy of its meaning, fell from the lips of him who had been tried by fire.
The voice of the one hundred and fifty on the steps of Nicanor, picked for beauty from a singing nation, burst about the trio, an eruption of great harmony, overwhelming the echoes of the Temple, flooding the purlieus of the Holy Hill, mounting the morning winds to float across the hollow, reverberating ravines, to resound on the bosom of Zion, to penetrate the dark vale of Kedron, and to fail and be one with the reedy rushing of airs through the cedars of Olivet.
"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn deceitfully;
"He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation!"
Marsyas found himself coming under the influence of the psalm. It seemed that the modifiers, describing the elect, had become lofty, solemn attributes not to be assumed by a simple claim to them, not to be had after the commission of deeds not specifically interdicted, not to be obtained by the harkening to one's own will; nor yet to be had did one fix himself in a chrysalis of form, wrap his soul in clean linen, and bury it in a remote spot, and keep hourly watch over it to keep it white—white but wizened. He seemed to understand that he had not understood these things in the days of his Essenism, nor in the days of his worldliness. And, remembering the meaning of his presence in the Temple, he felt peculiarly accused in his soul. What right had he, who had brought with him the spirit of murder, in the Holy Hill?
He could not shake off the self-accusation, but his resolution was unweakened. He would depart!
The hand of one who stood beside him dropped upon his shoulder and lingered. He looked and saw beside him a great man, in the garments of an artisan, that covered him, figure, head and face against identification. But Marsyas had known Eleazar under more effective disguise; the rabbi was not concealed from him now.
Perhaps he could learn from Eleazar the whereabouts of Saul of Tarsus, so he dropped his head again, and stayed.
The sun blazed on the spear-points, finishing the pinnacle of the Temple with glowing embers; the variegated marble of the Court of Gentiles was yellow as the gold of Ophir, and the morning radiance trembled over the City of David, lying in the valley two hundred feet below or rising up the slopes beyond the ravine. The long winding stream of worshipers flowed from the Gate Beautiful, left, through the well of the stairs to the level where entered the Gate of Akra, down the long flight of steps into the vale of Gihon, and, dispersing, lost itself in the crowded passages of the Lower City.
Before they were out of the morning shadow of the giant retaining-wall, Marsyas spoke.
"Where is our enemy?"
"He is for a time gone hence, and my soul is escaped as a bird out of a snare of the fowlers. I can come now without much fear unto the Holy House."
"Hence?" Marsyas asked uneasily. "Whither?"
"I shall tell thee. Know thou, first, that I am here, since several weeks, abiding among the weavers of Bezetha, and laboring with them; for Peter, the usurer of Ptolemais, is dead and his servants scattered abroad. Since Jerusalem hath been purified of the heresy, there is little search after the Nazarenes, so, as the robbed house is more secure than the one as yet unentered by thieves, I am unmolested in Bezetha. Yet, until this morning, I have not dared venture into the Temple."
"But Saul?" Marsyas urged impatiently.
"I am coming unto Saul. Jonathan, the High Priest, exhausted the patience of Vitellius in ten months. The Roman's endurance wore through and snapped on a sudden like an overstrained cord. On a certain day, in the Feast of Tabernacles, Jonathan was High Priest; ere nightfall some respected Jew complained to the legate; the next day, Theophilus, brother to Jonathan, was clothed in the robes of Aaron.
"Saul was brought up for the instant, but thou knowest that he is no cautious weigher of conditions. He did that which hath proven him not the unforeseeing time-server of a bloodthirsty man, but a follower of his own conscience and the servant of his own zeal. He went to the new High Priest while yet the robes retained the shape of Jonathan, and spake unto him: 'O ruler of my people, is the purification of the faith to be given over, seeing that it was the way of thy brother and abhorred of the Roman? Servest thou Vitellius or Jehovah?' It is not told abroad among the people what answer was given, what further asked, except that the chastening of the heretics was continued unabated, until all Judea was cleansed. And yesterday, Saul was given letters to Jews in Syria, permitting him to carry his examinations into Damascus and—"
"Damascus!" Marsyas cried, seizing the rabbi's arm.
"Yes; and to bring the offenders to Jerusalem for trial."
"Is he gone?" Marsyas demanded in a terrible voice.
"He passed out of the Damascus Gate at sunset last night."
"Come! Go with me! Let us overtake him! He shall not go on!"
"For revenge, Marsyas?" Eleazar asked mildly, but with reproof in his eyes.
"To cut him off from desolating me wholly!" Marsyas declared.
Eleazar looked away over the hollows and gentler hills covered with houses, toward the summit of Olivet, golden in the sun.
"Then I shall not dissuade thee, Marsyas; but I can not go with thee," he said.
"Why?" Marsyas demanded, with a flush of feeling.
"I have suffered from oppression in the name of the Lord; it is the Lord's will. I have changed in the days of my misfortunes."
Marsyas came close to him.
"Art thou a Nazarene, Eleazar?" he asked in a low tone.
"Nay, I am a good Jew, a better Jew, for I have become a Jew, again, through understanding."
But Marsyas was not willing to wait for the rabbi's philosophy; he moved restlessly as he stood, and finally put forth his hand to say farewell, but Eleazar held it.
"Wait, but a moment," he said, "and let me speak. Thou sayest thou wouldst secure thyself from devastation at the Pharisee's hands; since nothing can stop Saul, and nothing stop thee, there is death at the end of thy doing. I do not know what moves thee now; perchance it is more than the vow sworn to avenge Stephen. But thou goest to help thyself; and—to assist in convincing the heathen that Israel is an oppressor in the name of God!"
"It is!" Marsyas cried passionately.
But the rabbi went on patiently.
"I did not go out after Stephen," he continued. "I was not seen at the crucifixion of his Prophet. I do not urge bloodshed or urge on the work of Saul of Tarsus. So, who is Israel, O son of a shut house and of a hermit brotherhood? Saul, who knoweth no moderation? Certain feeble and forward speakers in the synagogues, whom even an apostate could overthrow in argument? Or the witnesses whom they suborned in revenge? Say, be these Israel, or Gamaliel who discountenanced the persecution? Or the people among whom the minions of the High Priest Jonathan went cautiously to arrest the fathers of the Nazarene faith, lest the people stone the Shoterim? Forget not, brother, that our lofty are the friends of Rome; our lowly, tributaries of Rome; our chief priests, dependent upon Rome—and the greater Israel is the unheard, the unrecorded, the unpampered, the innocent!"
"But is it not just, then, that Saul be overtaken, who hath cast obloquy on Israel, having shed innocent blood and made Judea to be fled by the righteous?"
"Defendest thou the innocent of Israel, Marsyas?"
"By the Lord, the innocent!"
"Wouldst trouble thyself, had the doom fallen on others, instead of thine own, Marsyas?"
The young man frowned and made no answer.
"I shall not answer for thee," Eleazar went on, "but thou and the world accuse the innocent of Israel, when contempt is cast upon the race, as an entirety. But the slander of Israel hath been accomplished, even before Saul, and ye may not run down a lie. So thou and I and our kind have the hard task of upholding the glory of the people, a labor from which there can be no let nor easement! The multitude which crowns to-day and crucifies to-morrow establishes no standard. But they are witnesses to the evil-speaking of the enemy; they are a slander which may not be denied. If thou join thyself with them, Marsyas, for thine own ends, in that much thou ungirdest Israel!"
"Brother, Saul of Tarsus consented unto the death of Stephen, and despoiled me of my one love, as an Essene; he proceedeth, now, against my beloved, as a man of the world! I can not wait on conscience and the welfare of Judea. She will not defend mine own; wherefore I must defend them, at whatever cost!"
Eleazar's face had grown inexpressibly sad during Marsyas' words. His heavily-shaded eyes turned absently away from the speaker. He seemed to see beyond the invincible walls and towers of the Holy City, even beyond the olive-orchards and the meeting of the earth and sky, into the time which would come out of the east.
Perhaps he saw waste and desolate places, lands of destruction and captives of the mighty, dregs of the cup of trembling and dregs of the cup of fury and the hostility of all nations. The sadness in his eyes became fixed.
"Verily," he said, as if speaking of his own visions, "thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel!"
Marsyas heard him with a stir of emotion in his soul. He put out his hand to the rabbi.
"If I and my like be wrong, thou shall prevail, when the day of the just man comes, in the Lord's time!"
"He called us His chosen people," Eleazar continued, suffering Marsyas to take his hand unnoticed, "even the appointed people, the marked people! Marked for His own purposes, how hidden! But what knows the clay of the potter's intent that passes it through fire? Chastening or vengeance, woe, woe unto them, by whom it cometh!"
He turned away, and Marsyas looked after him until the narrow winding streets had obscured him.
Quickly then Marsyas continued toward the Gennath Gate; reared to the Essenic habit of traveling without preparation, he was ready to journey from city to city in the dress he wore on the streets.
He went by the cenotaph of Mariamne, past Phasælus, past the Prætorium, out of the gate, past the might of Hippicus, and on to the parting of the road, where he took the way to Damascus.
Presently he met a horseman and, stopping the traveler, bought without parley the beast, and mounted it. He knew that Saul would proceed by the slow mule, and the forbidden, nobler animal, the horse, would soon make up the distance the Pharisee had gained.
So, without relaxing from his fever of determination, Marsyas sped on toward Damascus.
He knew that the hour had come!