[1]This is the only point in the boy’s story where there is any discrepancy between his experiences as told by himself and the sacred and profane writers of the period. It does not appear among the sacred writers whether the corn ships carrying the Prophet at the various ports of call delayed long enough for the prisoners to have gone in to Antioch, as they did at all the other ports where Christians dwelt; but in the profane writers of Rome and Greece at the period ’61 A.D. to ’68 A.D., are abundant proofs of all the youth’s adventures in Daphne’s Gardens; and Bernice’s record became an infamy in Rome.
[1]
This is the only point in the boy’s story where there is any discrepancy between his experiences as told by himself and the sacred and profane writers of the period. It does not appear among the sacred writers whether the corn ships carrying the Prophet at the various ports of call delayed long enough for the prisoners to have gone in to Antioch, as they did at all the other ports where Christians dwelt; but in the profane writers of Rome and Greece at the period ’61 A.D. to ’68 A.D., are abundant proofs of all the youth’s adventures in Daphne’s Gardens; and Bernice’s record became an infamy in Rome.
Here Agrippa and Bernice took their pleasure, and he, now the trusted page, accompanied them, as steersman for the nymphs. He was clad in silvered silks, the girl rowers in spangled nets, with naked limbs the color of pink shells. He knew that five hundred bastinadoes on the soles of his feet would be the punishment if ever he breathed a word of what he saw on these nights; and he saw nothing; but dipped his steersman paddle to the rhythm of the temple music, and watched the limpid water ripple in drops of moonlit gold, and dreamed his dreams of awakening youth, which are wiser than seers in their intuitions and stronger than breastplates of bronze in their innocence. He knew nothing going on around him because he saw nothing but Bernice’s eyes; and she was so far beyond his reach, he saw no spider net in those black, fathomless eyes.
And then one day crashed down his house of dreams in catastrophe about his youth. It had been a wild day of painted barges, of soothsayers, of magicians, of story-tellers, of dwarfs, of buffoons, of libations to Bacchus, and temple nymphs clad in golden gauze. The flesh of grown man did not live that could pass that day unscathed; and the page, who had been a mountain boy, knew naught of a goddess who could turn men to swine. There had been an older man with King Agrippa and his sister that day. The boy remembered afterward the older man had the face of one of the satyrs, half man, half goat, of whom his mountain tribes told.
There had been frenzied dancing in the love temples and more libations to Bacchus; but the mountaineers do not drink; and at the end of that day, to quiet evil tongues, Princess Bernice had been affianced to the King with the satyr face; and the star of the boy’s lamp had gone out in utter blackness, with his heart cold lead, till, passing from the love temple in her curtained, latticed litter, she had thrust out her hand to him in the dark and given him the purse of gold and bade him haste to Rome and meet her there, while she went to Jerusalem to pay a vow! He did not know the nature of that vow, though all the fashion of Rome was laughing over it, and poets made mock of it and actors in the theaters extemporized lines on “Bernice’s locks” and do to this day.
He knew with the knowledge of youth she had shaved her head and taken her vow to escape her elderly spouse; and now the rough Idumean guard had said all Rome was laughing at the way the sly maid had gone to Jerusalem but to throw her nymph net over Titus, son of Vespasian, who might become Emperor after Nero.
And now he stood in the prison hut of Rome, with the wolf harpies of the water-front wine shops outside, locked in by the Roman soldier, who knew there was fortune to be grasped by restoring a slave, with the threat ringing in his ears—“There is no escape from Roman power in all the known world; keep your tongue from blabbing—or I’ll cut it out with my dagger,” and the Lebanon boy had seen captives whose tongues had been cut by daggers. He knew this was no idle threat; but he did not know it was his boyish beauty that had cast the fatal net of danger round himself.
The boy stood with his head hanging, behind the locked door of the prison hut, like a fly caught in an evil spider web. He did not ascribe the net flung round him by dark eyes seen through the lattice of a palanquin to any spider maid; for he was still thinking with the knowledge of youth rather than age. He only knew the spider net had become strong chains binding him to the evil forces of the great Imperial City of the world, and that he had been flung into that net by a destiny uncontrolled by him except for the one act—when he had run away from his merchant master at Colossé.
He was too deeply sunk in sudden despond and fear to notice the flickering of the shadows from the lifted breccia-stone lamp held in the Prophet’s hand, while the other hand shaded the old man’s defective vision peering at the ragged figure against the back of the locked door. All hope had flickered out for him with the turning of the double lock by that great key the Idumean carried.
A voice spoke out of the dark, quiet, clear, and limpid as his own mountain streams in Lebanon: “Child, come here! Why are you troubled?”
The boy raised his long-lashed blue eyes and looked across to see, not the little withered wisp of a man he had remembered as the Prophet, but a snow-white face illumined in an ethereal light and framed in an aureole of snow white hair.
“The Lord Julius bade me prepare your supper.”
The Prophet did not press his question. “There are the corn bread and the leben in the alcove,” he said, pointing to a dark corner of the stone wall, “and in one jar you will find the drinking water and in the other the fresh pulse.”
The boy laid the meal on the rough table without a word and took his stand behind the Prophet’s stool. He was still dust spattered and torn from his fall.
“Bring the couch to the table,” requested the Prophet.
Thinking the Master wished to eat reclining, after the manner of the Judeans, the boy lifted the couch and placed it at the table.
“Join me,” gently urged the Prophet. “I remember when I was a lad in Tarsus before I went down to study law in Jerusalem, we used to say of the mountain men, when they had broken bread and salt with us, they would be our friends forever, and never utter word, or think thought against host or guest. A good rule, child.”
Tears sprang to the lad’s eyes; for what the Prophet had said was true, and recalled all the stern tradition of the mountain tribes, who dwelt in tents and roved the desert on camels.
“Let us bless God and give thanks,” said the Master, bowing his head; and the boy understood neither the strange Deity to whom thanks were given nor what there was for thanks in a prison hut.
It must have been the white hair or the white beard; for though the wick was guttering lower in the breccia lamp, that luminous look seemed to shine brighter and brighter round the figure of the Prophet. The boy could see his hands like hands of snow in the gathering dusk of the hut; and his brow shone with the radiance of the sun’s white flame at dawn.
“Why did you wish to see Timothy?” he asked, as though reading the lad’s thought.
Thereat, the youth’s pent emotions of terror and despondency and fearful unknown danger broke in floods of speech.
“And, oh, Master,” cried the boy, finishing the narrative that the Idumean had forbidden him to tell, and holding back nothing but his love for the Princess, “my Lord Julius says there is no escape from the power of Rome from Gaul to the Ganges for a slave. Let me be your slave, oh, Master! Master, buy me and save me! I’ll serve you as never Emperor was served in thought and speech and act! I’ll serve you forever with no brand on my palms or shoulders.” And the little mountaineer, who never yet had bowed his head to earth as slave, fell at the old man’s knees sobbing, and would have placed the Prophet’s foot on his neck.
“What was your merchant master’s name in Colossé?”
“The Lord Philemon; and oh, my Master, I’ll pay him back my price and all the money I stole to run away to Rome. I’ll work my hands to the bone! I’ll earn wages for my price by acting as runner between the poles for the great Romans in the villas here. I’ll pay him back fourfold as the law demands. Only let me stay—keep me from the wolves of Rome—keep the Lord Julius from selling me to Nero’s Palace, or tearing out my tongue for telling you, or flogging me five hundred bastinadoes on my feet for running away, or betraying me for telling of Bernice’s kindness. I know now what I should or should not tell, nor why—”
“Ah, those crafty foxes of the Herod brood! ’Twas what Christ called them when they slew John for Salome’s dance. She was of the same brood of vipers long ago; and the blood of a Herod runs true to color.”
The Prophet’s hands were over his eyes and he seemed to be thinking back long, long years. The hearth fire guttered lower. The lamp wick had burned almost to the edge of the oil, and still the Prophet’s face shone with luminous radiance as of an inner white flame; and his hands looked like ethereal hands through which flamed an inner fire of the spirit in kindly deeds.
“Dear Master, let me be your slave—”
“Child, there are nor bond nor free in the Great Kingdom which I serve; for neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor heights, nor depths, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
“Nor bond nor free?” cried the little mountaineer. “Is there a kingdom in all the world where there are neither bond nor free?”
“The Kingdom is here and now,” said the Prophet; and his brow shone with the radiance of moonlight on the snowy peaks of Lebanon.
“But, sir,” cried the boy, “they held me slave, and they hold you in bonds; for the King Agrippa told the Lord Julius—”
“Two bodies there are,” answered the Prophet gently, “one terrestrial and one celestial—one that waxes old as a garment which we cast aside, and one that grows younger with fuller life as the years nearer draw to God; and neither life nor death, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature than ourselves can place bonds upon that body. Like the air, which we do not see, but in which we live and move and have our being, that celestial body lives and moves and has its being in the love of God. Child, rejoice, rejoice, again I say rejoice, that the Glad News has come and the Kingdom is here—and now.”
When the Idumean returned, his mood seemed again gentler. He bade the boy fasten the wrist gyves of the chain on the prisoner’s left arm to his own right wrist, and to sleep on the floor, so that he as older man would not be troubled in his sleep by the clank of the chain when he tossed restlessly at night, as age is wont to do.
And when the boy wakened in the morning with the day-star shining through the lattice of the high window, he found his new Master had thrown over him, against the dank chill of the marshes at night, his own black gabardine doctor’s cloak of Damascus velvet. While the Idumean and the prisoner, chained up again at sunrise, took the air in parade before the barracks of the Prætorian Guard, the youth swept out the hut floor with a broom of brush and laid the breakfast on the rough board table. Then the bonds were unlocked from the guard’s arms and the prisoner sat down to write letters, or receive visitors, and the old Idumean again posted himself on the stone bench in front of the hut.
When the lad came out, the Idumean bade him sit down on the bench to talk. “The prisoner says he has arranged to take you for—by Jupiter—he wouldn’t call you ‘slave’—a queer lot these followers of Christus—he said he’d take you for his helper—he’d known your merchant master as a friend in Colossé and would take you for a pledge of what that merchant owed him. That’s good Roman law. You’re safe enough now. He said your new name must be Onesimus—the Helpful One.”
“Why, that—is my very own name. How could he know?”
The Prætorian guard smiled. “He knows queer things in queer ways, this prisoner. Rome is full of magicians and sorcerers and soothsayers, mostly Greeks and Jews; but I never knew one could tell what he foretold about the storm, nor hold from mutiny two hundred and seventy prisoners swimming for freedom unchained in the open sea. What puzzles me is, when he has this power, why doesn’t he use it to get himself his freedom instead of wasting two full years here babbling of the Glad News—Glad News—Glad News? News, indeed, ’twill be if Nero places all his tribe in the arena to feed the wild beasts! Why doesn’t he use his power to build himself a fortune, and buy a kingdom as Herod did, and rule all Jewry? Then I’ll follow him myself; for Rome is breaking up.”
“What does he say when you ask him that?”
“Oh, folly about a Kingdom not made with hands; a Kingdom of the soul. What’s a soul to Roman legions? Sometimes, like Festus, I incline to think much learning hath made him mad—”
“I remember the very words—the very words he said at Cæsarea the day I saved the jewel on the chariot course for Princess Bernice; and King Agrippa said ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian’—you know the way King Agrippa has, pretending to agree, to draw the adversary on—”
“And what said our Prophet to that?”
“He smiled that gentle, fearless way of his and said—‘I would thou wert such as I am’; and all his prison chains rattled to the floor as he threw up his arm when he said that; and the great ones on the judgment seat broke out in laughter. King Agrippa laughed the merriest of all; and the Princess whispered ‘The gods forbid.’ What does he teach? What does he believe, Lord Julius?”
“How do I know?” answered the Idumean roughly. “It’s always Glad News—Glad News—Glad News; Rejoice—Rejoice—Rejoice! By Jupiter, what have the Jews had to rejoice about for a thousand years, till Rome came and gave them good roads and theaters and forums and aqueducts, and held the fierce sand rovers back, plundering their very Holy Temple with its golden doors? I mind once hearing the soldiers talk of an Egyptian, I think it was, who plundered their precious Temple before Herod rebuilt it; and when he entered into their Holy of Holies, where never man trod, and their own priests opened only once a year to take the gold angels above the Altar, there wasn’t even the image of a little gold god—not a thing in brass or silver like a god—only a queer blue cloud like a flame from some of their magic fires—”
“A queer blue cloud like a flame?” repeated the boy. “Why, that’s the way his face and hands look in the dark. What does he teach?”
“Listen when his visitors come, and you’ll learn soon enough if you can make anything of their Greek doctrine and Jewish jargon—I can’t. I’m Idumean—Roman—I believe in pikes and swords—in law and gold. One day it’s ‘don’t be insipid’—‘don’t lose your salt’—‘never assume gloomy looks’—‘don’t throw pearls to swine’—‘away with fear’—‘laugh at the sting of death’—‘lead justice to victory’; or else he tells these Jews of Rome they are ‘fatheads and dullwits and grosshearts,’ with which we Romans agree; or else ‘the earth is an inn and death the eternal house to which he has the key to another house of many mansions,’ or he quotes that old Job legend of the Arabs, about ‘flesh renewed as a little child’s’; but you should hear him when the young Timothy comes— ‘It’s Timothy, son, beware the young widows.’ That’s what I call sense.
“It would be good advice to you next time a princess with black eyes casts her net at a simpleton! He calls his Christus a Lamb of sacrifice for sin. That’s queer; for I remember nearly forty years ago, when I was your age, I helped to crucify that Christus. Still it’s not so different from the Sacred Bull of Egypt by which the priests get revenue, or the Sacred Lion of Chaldea, or Jupiter of our Sun Temples. Our kings all get revenue by some religious trick hitched up to fear of some god—sun or star or love of war! As I tell you, I’m a plain soldier. I can make nothing of it. I’m for the power of Rome, the law of Rome, the wealth of Rome; there is no power on earth can stand up against it.”
The boy sat pondering. He couldn’t forget that little blue flame above the desecrated Altar of the plundered Temple, like the radiance of the Prophet’s brow in the dark. Perhaps all eyes could not see that flame. Perhaps that was what had blinded the Prophet. He’d ask him about that.
And so the summer ran to winter and the winter to spring again, when the emptied corn ships went back to Greece and Egypt, laden with tin from Britain and hides from Gaul and copper from Spain.
The boy saw and pondered much. He was known now among the Jews of Rome as the adopted son of the prisoner. What passed between the boy and the Prophet, only God knows. They were as loving father and more loving son. The Prophet was restless when the boy was out of his sight; and the boy’s eyes followed his master with the mute love of a child for a saint. But fewer and fewer converts came to see the Prophet; for Nero’s mood was darkening toward the new sect; and the believers were scattering to the hills and to the Isles of the Sea before the storm broke.
Only the gentle Greek physician called Luke kept coming; and one Mark, a deacon, who talked much of a great leader, Peter; and the young scribe, Timothy, grown more ethereal and frail as he added years, and a great one, called Epaphroditus, who was friend of many great ones, but led no sect for fear of his head. Once Epaphroditus came with a learned Jewish scholar called Josephus, whose records may be read to this day.
And he and the Prophet talked long and bitterly of the law, of the Roman rulers and armies in Judea. Like Epaphroditus, Josephus openly joined no sect that was cold or indifferent to Rome; but his beliefs may be read between the lines of all he wrote.
And once there came with Epaphroditus a strange huge man clad all in white from Alexandria, followed by a caravan of camels that Roman rumor said had traversed all the world. His name was Apollos; and he joined the learning of the Persians to the learning of the Greeks; and had prophesied all that the prisoner told; and his sayings, too, may be found to this day both among the Egyptians and the Persians. The Prophet and the huge man in white embraced like brothers; and all Rome went mad with the sensations of a day over what they called the Magian. Rome was more mad over his caravan of camels than about his doctrines.
Once the boy turned to his beloved patron: “Master,” he said, “when you have power to save me, why do you not use your power to save yourself and flee from the dangers of Rome?”
“Because he that saveth his life shall lose it.”
And that night, when he was writing a letter to Timothy, who was in Greece, to come to Rome, the boy heard the Prophet dictate the words, “I have fought a good fight—I have finished my course. I have kept the faith.” Why, the boy wondered, does he say he has finished his course?
When Timothy came to Rome, the boy went in to his patron.
Again, the frogs were piping in the marshes. It was a fair evening in spring. Again, the oleander and the acacia and the almond and the apricot bloom drugged the night with dreams. Again, the sun hung over the far sea in a warrior shield, and the dust from the chariot wheels filtered the air with powdered gold. Again the Spring Festival was over and all Rome seemed out-of-doors, afoot, on barge, on horseback, or in chariot, either going home to the hill towns of the poor, or down to the rich villas by the sea. Again, the bonfires burned on the hillsides with flamy eye, and gold-wheeled chariots flashed over the canal road in a smoke of dust. Again, the bargemen and sailors and slave rowers up from the corn ships of Egypt on Naples Bay made the night ring with knavish revels in the water-front wine shops; but though the sun sank as golden on the waters and the stars came out as silver over the hills, the canal was no longer the happy thoroughfare of gay throngs in spring under colored silk awnings with Nubian slaves on the rowers’ ivory benches; for a mute fear was settling over Rome as to what madness Nero would next pursue; and the great senators and generals no longer thronged to Rome. They had moved their families to their hillside estates and villas by the sea. The army and the loafers and the idle freedmen and the slaves openly ruled Rome. Nero could hold the loafers and the idle freedmen and the slaves with gifts of free corn and wild Bacchanalian festivals and gladiatorial combats and the baiting of captives taken in war by wild beasts, but all Rome was asking who was strong enough to rule the vast Imperial Army. What would Vespasian, busy in the wars of Palestine, do when he came? What would Titus, over whom Bernice was casting her spider net, do?
A pall rested over the gayly colored spring scenes of Rome. It was as if Vesuvius rumbled and darkened long before the lava-flow buried the beautiful villas in lakes of rock and fire.
So when Onesimus, the helper, had asked the prisoner Prophet why he did not save himself by escaping from Rome, and had pondered that answer about those who save life losing life, and those losing life saving it, he came back in this spring evening and stood timidly before the Prophet.
“My beloved Master, now that you have Timothy with you to write your letters and the physician Luke to care for our body, would you miss me if I went back to Colossé?”
“I would miss you as I would a beloved son begotten of mine own flesh,” said the prisoner gently. “Have you not cast out fear of all that man can do unto you? Why do you wish to go to Colossé instead of carrying the glad tidings to your mountain people?”
“O Master,” Onesimus had fallen to his knees, with his face in the Prophet’s hands, which he bathed in tears. “I fear not what all Rome can do unto me; for I have joined that Kingdom not made with hands; but I fear only the reproach of a good conscience and of my Lord of the Glad Kingdom. I have saved enough of my earnings to pay back the merchant Philemon fourfold the money I stole from him.[2]He bought me from King Agrippa for a price. I would go back, his slave, till your King gives me my freedom.”
[2]The value of a slave at this time was about eighteen dollars of modern money, though much more was paid for beautiful girl captives and young men who gave promise of becoming gladiators.
[2]
The value of a slave at this time was about eighteen dollars of modern money, though much more was paid for beautiful girl captives and young men who gave promise of becoming gladiators.
The Prophet’s hands lifted and rested on the boy’s hair. In the dark they shone with the luminous light of the stars on snow. His lips were moving—the boy heard him whisper— “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; the Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
That evening the Idumean of the Prætorian guards remained down at the water front among the wine shops, and the Prophet wrote far into the night. Onesimus would have written for him, for the prisoner’s eyes had grown dimmer; but the Master said it was better this letter should be written privately; and he wrote it on a wax tablet with an onyx stylus to guide his failing sight. When he had finished he put the tablet in a parchment case sealed with wax and bade the boy give it to the merchant Philemon of Colossé. Then he embraced Onesimus and sent him to board the barges that would go down the canal to the corn ships setting sail at daybreak for Grecian Asia.
Here briefly is what he wrote. You will find it exactly and fully as he wrote it in the oldest record of documentary history in the world—the most widely circulated documents in the modern world and probably the least thoroughly read of all books in the world. Space permits only the briefest outline of the letter, the original of which any reader can compare in any language known in the world. Some few phrases differ according to the language, but the purport is the same in all; and the story is meticulously true in every essential, though scholars and schools still quarrel over some dates and two or three names. As far as it is possible to figure these early dates, this letter was written between 62 and 64 A.D.
“. . . to Philemon, our beloved and fellow worker, and to Apphia, our gracious lady . . . I had great joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of God’s people have been and are, refreshed through you, my brother. . . . Therefore, though I speak very freely, it is for love’s sake I rather beg of you . . . I, the aged and prisoner . . . write to entreat you on behalf of a child, whose father I have become in my chains . . . I mean Onesimus, who was a bad bargain to you, but now, true to his name, has become a helpful one to us both.
“I am sending him back to you in his person, and it is as if I sent my own very heart . . . I wished to keep him with me that he might minister to me in my old age and chains, but without your consent I would not; for I wanted it of your free will. Receive him back no longer as a slave, but as brother, dear to me, beloved, as a fellow worker for Christ. If you still regard me as comrade, receive him as myself. If he was ever dishonest, or is in your debt, charge me with the amount. Hold me responsible for the debt on your books. I pledge my signature. I will pay you in full. (I say nothing of the fact you owe me yourself the same amount.)
“Yes, beloved, do me this favor for our Lord’s sake. Refresh my joy in Christ. I write you in full confidence. I know you will do more than I say, and provide accommodation for me; for I hope through your prayers I shall be free to come. Greetings from my fellow prisoners, among whom are Mark and Luke. May the graciousness of Christ be in the innermost soul of every one of you. . . .”
And though they put the signatures to the letters first in those days, which was a better thing than our custom of having to read through a letter to know who wrote it, the name signed to that letter by a half-blind little old man, ill, and so near death (Nero’s blade was already whetted for the sacrifice), with a chain on his arm in a prison hut, was
“PAUL.”
CHAPTER IIARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS
Three women sat cooped in the great fortress of Machærus, east of the Dead Sea, peeved that a war for world power had interfered with their own personal plans and petty intrigues. The rose-tinted mountains of Moab rose far to the east, tier on tier above the Desert, dyed in a mystic fire of cloud and light that might have been the abode of gods from eternity. North and south, you could have dropped a pebble from the turret, where the women sat, down precipice sheer as a wall twenty-five hundred feet. West, the clouds boiled a silver sea far below the Fort bastion on the blue and green of deep translucent waters. These waters are to-day known as the Dead Sea. At that time, they were called the Asphaltis Sea owing to the pungent burnt odor of petroleum and sulphur, that came up from their hot springs.
Safe as an eagle’s nest above the storm clouds perched the Fort on the mountain height, where rulers’ wives and daughters were housed from stress of war and raid, but angry as an eagle’s young were the strident voices of these pampered favorites of harem and court, that the blood of men flowing deep as the horses’ bridles over at the siege of Jerusalem, should be keeping these caged birds from the garden of joy in life.
The elder women rose petulantly and stood at the deep casement of the window in the open turret, where the breeze came up from the silver clouds lying below on the Sea. By the uncertain feeling out of her hands for the stone wall, it was apparent she was almost blind. Her hair lay lustrous black on her brow, but here and there a silver line showed she was past middle age, and the slight film across the pupils of her black eyes betrayed the cataract obscuring light.
“A curse on these seditious Judeans,” she protested, tapping her sandaled foot impatiently on the stone floor. “Rome gave them the best government they have ever had—justice, safety, forums, aqueducts, theaters, low taxes; and what have they returned to Rome for protection from enemies east and west? Rebellion for seventy years! First Herod the Great slew some brats in Bethlehem; and he must needs go mad with jealousy and strangle his Jewess wife, and be haunted ever after by her pale ghost in this accursed Fort! Then because I chose to love the Second Herod instead of his brother Philip, to whom I was sold as child, I must be taunted as a sinner of the streets by the little Hermit John; and my Lord Herod must turn soft because he loved the ragged madman’s ‘rough honest ways.’ Honest? I call it insolence and would have torn his tongue out if I could! What right have raving fanatics to pry open private lives? I got him prisoned in the dungeon here for two full years before I caught my Lord Herod in his cups and settled the Hermit’s mad impudence with the headman’s sword. . . .”
The two other women, who were yet in the flush of first youth, rose and joined the elder in the open window of the turret. One was short, with crafty laughing eyes and full voluptuous inviting lips, and the air of insolence in her beauty that could challenge life. The other was tall and slender with eyes that dreamed, but what or how they dreamed no soul outside her own deep thoughts could know.
“Then, Aunt,” pleaded the slenderer of the two, throwing an arm tenderly around the blind woman, “with your mad Hermit dead, why rage and bruise yourself against the past?”
“Little soft dreaming fool!” The blind woman petulantly threw the girl’s arm from her waist. “Have you forgotten when my Lord Herod’s first wife—that discarded rag of treachery, who could not hold the love I won—went back to her father, the King of Arabia, and roused all the tribes to attack us here, we lost? We lost, and I was blamed, and my Lord was banished first to the barbarians of the Danube and then to the savages of Spain, to whom I must go unless you can snare Titus, the Emperor’s son, over in the siege of Jerusalem there. Only you can save the last of Herod’s line—Bernice.”
The younger woman designated Bernice gazed deep in the silver clouds boiling above the Dead Sea.
“Much chance I have to snare Titus shut up here away from the warriors of Jerusalem; but if we Herod women must be played as pawns to win kingdoms, let us play pawn for the biggest prize of all—Rome.”
The elder woman had placed her elbows on the casement of the window and sank her face in her hands.
“If you were not such a little fool of dreams, Niece Bernice, you would never have left Jerusalem. You would have stayed on in the Temple Herod built, paying your vows, if you had to cling to the Altar horns! You were wife of Herod Third; and who did more for the Judeans? Free feasts, free games, you remember Cæsarea; and all because your Lord let the Jews stone James, that zealot of the Nazarene, know you what the populace says? They say their God, whom no one has even seen, slew your husband in his coat of silver mail!”
“I thank their God for that,” absently answered the girl Bernice. “Herod Third was too old. You chose your Herod. I was sold to mine.”
The other younger woman with the insolent inviting voluptuous lips laughed.
“Because you had fallen in love with the little blue-eyed slave, Onesimus, whom Felix and Festus rescued from the robber bands of Galilee.”
“That slur sounds not well from you, Sister Drusilla! You, yourself, married freed slave. Have you forgotten Felix was freed slave?” asked the slenderer of the sisters.
Drusilla of the voluptuous lips laughed. “No, nor have I forgotten he is the only one of all the Herod husbands who left his wife safe with wealth in times of peril. He rose to be ruler under Rome. . . .”
“And drove the Jews to insurrection by his thefts and taxes to give you wealth,” interrupted Bernice.
The older woman whirled on them with the fires of fury in her blind eyes. “Peace to your sparrow chatter—fools—fools—fools! What do you know of love, or constancy? You barter love and time for gain as gamblers throw their dice. My Lord Herod and I bartered all for love—and lost—and love as ever! And he is far among the savages of Spain and I am caged here to wait the fortune of war at Jerusalem! And time is short, and I grow old, and does his love grow cold? You read his letter brought by the post this day, how he longs to hold me in his arms once more! Nightly, I have prayed to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth for my love to descend to him in far-off Spain down the beams of the starlight, or moonlight, to hold him forever to me true! Instead of answer to my prayers—what? This accursed Fort haunted by the spirits of the dead! ’Twas here the spirit of Mariamne, whom Herod the Great strangled, came haunting him till he went mad. ’Tis here where we are shut up prisoners of the past, beating our weak women hands ’gainst the fetters of fate, the ghosts of our past come haunting us! I tell you fools that in the dark I can dream I am not blind, but when I pray for my Lord’s love to come and wrap me in his arms, when it is dark and I can forget I am blind—what comes? What comes? What comes? I say! I could be a lioness to fight for my cubs, as all the Herod women ever are; but when I pray for forgetfulness, what comes—I say?”
“Dear Aunt Herodias,” gently expostulated the younger Bernice. “These are not wise words. Our weak hands only bruise when we batter fate.”
“Fool—your course is not yet run—dreaming of a blue-eyed slave, when you should be in Jerusalem mending all our fortunes by marrying Titus, the Emperor’s son!”
The two drew back from the violence of the elder woman standing in the open-windowed turret.
“Herodias will be maniac unless we send her to her husband in Spain,” whispered the sister Drusilla.
“Maniac,” repeated the blind woman in scorn. “So you would be, if nightly when you prayed for love there came rolling over the stone floor the bloody head of that wild Hermit beheaded in the cellar here. . . . If I could tear these scales from my eyes and prove it is not true; but can a blind lioness fight. . . .?”
“Let us go to the garden—we only anger her. She will rave to exhaustion till she gets some sleep, and dreams she sees the head again,” murmured Drusilla. “I could wish we were out of the haunted fortress here. It is ill-fated! Do you go to Jerusalem and get the Emperor’s permission for us to leave for Rome. . . .”
“I will do that, Sister Drusilla, but do not anger her by making light of her mad love for Herod. No Herod woman dare grow afraid. Our past is a black, back wall! Our future is blacker if Jerusalem falls and Judea is ruled direct from Rome. Our brother Agrippa will be deposed. He is last of our line. Everything hangs on winning Titus’ favor; and with the road to Jericho blocked black by troops, it is easier to say ‘go to Jerusalem’ than go! Unless a caravan comes this way from the East bound for the Sea, which I can join disguised, how can we escape the Roman guard set to watch the gates?”
They descended the stone stairs of the turret in thoughtful silence and emerged in the great garden of the Fort. A broad walled parapet ran round the edge of the sheer precipice on which the Fort was perched above the cloudy Sea. Only one side gave exit, or approach—a narrow causeway to the east with drop straight as a wall on either side, leading out to the rose-tinted mountains of Moab, tier on tier above the Desert dyed in a mystic fire of cloud and light.
An old Idumean guard sat in the shade under the arched gate to the causeway. He took his helmet off and yawned drearily. His beard had grizzled gray and his thatch of close-cropped curly hair had whitened with age. As the two sisters approached walking along the wall of the parapet and came under the shade of the arch, he rose stiffly and saluted.
“How are the roads to Jerusalem, old Julius?” asked Drusilla, throwing her purple silk cloak back over her shoulder so her bare arms shone jeweled with bracelets.
“Blocked, blocked, Good Ladies,” returned the old Idumean wearily. “Dreary task this, your Highness, guarding sibyls, who could bewitch all Rome’s generals if they escaped down to Jerusalem.”
“What is the hammering we hear below the fog of clouds?” asked Bernice trying to penetrate the import of his answer.
“Camel bells of some caravan coming up the causeway, or clanking of the forges down at Jericho making war engines for the siege.”
“Are there many refugees in the caves between here and the Jordan, Julius?” pressed Bernice.
“The Nazarenes are fleeing from Jerusalem to the Desert of Moab like sheep harried by wolves; and robber bands are everywhere. I’ll warrant those poor sheep will be fleeced of their wool before they reach the caves of their Secret Lodges. Dangerous, Ladies, too dangerous for princesses in royal robes to venture these roads when my head’s pledged for their safety.”
“Why should a princess want to pass that way, old Julius?” smiled Drusilla of the voluptuous lips.
“Because Titus, the Emperor’s son, is at the end of yon road.” He pointed down the precipice path towards Jericho beyond the Jordan.
Drusilla laughed again. Bernice strolled through the arched gateway and gazed past the rose-mist of light and clouds above the Desert mountains.
“Are there ghosts in the dungeons beneath the Fort, dear Julius?” pressed Drusilla.
“None that I know but spears and swords to protect the women here if Titus fail at Jerusalem,” answered the old Idumean, stretching his spear across the open gate of the arch to the causeway across Princess Bernice’s way.
The two Princesses turned and retraced their steps along the parapet. The old Idumean sat down on the bench again with an evil smile that showed all his yellow teeth like boar’s tusks.
“Witches! Enchantresses to turn men to swine! If I had my will, I’d throw them all over the precipice into the Dead Sea.”
“You see, Drusilla! We are really prisoners at Rome’s orders, though they pretend they are protecting us here,” said Bernice.
“What are prison walls to true love? Eat, drink and be merry; for to-morrow we die,” laughed Drusilla. “Why are they holding us prisoners here?”
“To grace Rome’s chariot wheels if they conquer Jerusalem,” Bernice answered bitterly. “And if I go to Rome, I go not with chained hands behind the chariots. I ride with Titus in the chariot under the conquerors’ arch—”
“And I thank Jupiter,” insolently laughed Drusilla, “that my slave husband Felix left enough gold to bribe freedom.”
They descended the stone steps from the parapet to the gardens. The rose-and-silver mist still boiled above the green translucent depths of the Dead Sea. It looked, so far below, a jewel in jade. An odor of roses and oleander came from the sloping gardens. Far below they could see the flat tiled roofs of the village outside the walls clinging to the precipice like birds’ nests; and every roof was crowded with women and children, to get the air.
“I hate women. If I had been a man, I would have been a warrior in the thick of it at Jerusalem there,” said Drusilla. “Women are feeble and helpless sheep. They either huddle in fright and go mad over the past like Aunt Herodias up in the turret there, or—are eaten by the wolves. If I knew where Felix camps among the barbarians, I’d throw my royal estate to the winds and join him to-morrow.”
“I would not. I’d rule the wolf,” said Bernice thoughtfully.
Their purple silk cloaks brushed the snowy petals of the cyclamens lining the garden paths. Bernice stooped and picked a field daisy.
“Heart of gold,” she said dreamily, “with vesture of white silk round it, I’ll pluck your petals and—wish.” She plucked the white petals one by one, throwing them on the ground.
“What does it say? Do you get your wish?” asked Drusilla.
Bernice’s fingers rested on the last slender white petal. She plucked it and kissed it. “I get my wish,” she said.
The clank of an armed tread startled their daydream.
They turned. It was the old Idumean.
“Ladies, a camel caravan has just now come up the causeway from the East. ’Twas their bells you heard! They ask permission to rest in our khan during the heat of the day and go on to Jerusalem by night across the Jordan.”
“Who are they?” demanded the Princess Drusilla imperiously.
“That was why I came to ask your permission, Princess! They are of the new Christian band that gave such trouble to all the Herods. One is a great figure of a man dressed in white with a flowing beard and train of servants bound for the Isles of Greece. His name is Apollos. I saw him in Rome, where he was held in honor, before Nero took the head of the prophet, Paul! The other is a young presbyter, whatever that may be, blue eyes, gold hair, who I could swear as slave served Paul in Rome. His name has slipped my mind; but they came in great state with the protection of Rome and ask lodgings in the Sun Temple till the heat of day passes.”
“Onesimus,” exclaimed Bernice.
“Yes, as I mind now, Lady, that was his very name; but he has grown a powerful man, fair as the angels of Gaul—but this Apollos as I questioned him, seemed a follower of the mad Hermit, John Baptist, ’gainst whose ghost the Queen Herodias raves at night. If they did not bear permission from Rome, I’d bid them pack to save trouble; but—” the old Idumean scratched his thatch of whitening hair.
Drusilla laughed insolently.
“Bid them take quarters in the Temple of the Sun but avoid the Palace here! Excuse us! Explain the Queen’s illness prevents our receiving them with becoming honor! Send down the best of provisions and bid them enjoy the full freedom of garden and baths after their journey. Begone—” she peremptorily clapped her hands.
Drusilla turned with a cynical laugh to her sister.
“You get your wish, Sister! You can join their caravan and go to Jerusalem and plead our case with Titus; but this must be kept from Aunt Herodias. If this Apollos be a follower of the raving Hermit, John, whose bloody head she sees every night in her dreams, she’ll be for a potion of poison on him and ditch our plans deeper than the moat beneath the walls. I’ll take care of the older man in the flowing white, ’spite of his beard, if you’ll beguile the young one with the golden locks. Now to the Temple of the Sun to make offerings to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth and all the goddesses of love under the Evening Star! Herodias cannot be moved while this madness is on her; but we can escape. You get your wish, Sister.”
But Bernice had turned white as the cyclamen of snow which brushed the royal purple of her silk vesture.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I get my wish! A curse upon it! Must Herod’s daughters always, always be pawns in Rome’s royal game?”
“What matter, if we are winning pawns?” smiled the other. “Cheer up, Sister! Throw away regret! Cast off fear! We can escape. Herodias has lived her life and won, and lost, and sits like an old fool drooling over her loss; but we are young yet! Let us eat, drink and be merry; for to-morrow we die.”
“You said, yourself, but a moment ago, you thanked Jupiter your slave husband Felix was the only one who had left a Herod daughter safe—”
Drusilla, like her aunt earlier in the afternoon, whirled upon her sister. Laughter had left only craft in the deep black eyes, and on the cruel voluptuous lips.
“Fool,” she said with a stab of scorn. “Do you hesitate because Onesimus, your slave boy, has come back grown to man? Will your lure be weaker, or stronger, now that he is grown with the strong wine of manhood in his veins? If you, a Herod’s daughter, could hesitate now, I’d stab you with my own hand the first time I found you asleep. Go to Jerusalem! Win Titus! He will be Emperor, too, in time. Onesimus can meet you in Rome. Bend fate to your will! Do not be bent and broken by any fate. We go to the Temple gardens to-night.”
The old Idumean went clanking back to the gate under the arch, stiff-legged as legs are wont to walk, that have been in armored greaves for seventy years.
“A curse on this Herod brood,” he went, muttering. “These women have thrown every Herod from his throne. If I had my will, I’d weight their feet with stones and throw them over the precipice in the Dead Sea; and I’d see these Nazarenes feed the lions as they fed the wild beasts in Nero’s days. Disturbers! Disturbers! Trouble makers! Pilate, a suicide stabbed by his own dagger! Procla, his wife, whining about the crucifixion and bad dreams! Herod First a madman. Herod Two an exile with his wife raving here over the Hermit’s bloody head! I’d like to know didn’t she order his head off at one blow in this very Fort! Herod Three falls dead in the theater of Cæsarea and his jade of a girl wife here up to fresh tricks on Titus! Pah! A nice task for an old soldier keeping guard of such harpies! I’d slash their lily-stem throats if I had my way.”
The sun went down behind the rose-tinted mountains of Judea to the west. Their peaks gleamed in blood and fire above the red and golden sands. Bernice sat on an ivory bench in the gardens above the silver clouds lying on the Dead Sea below. In her hand was a bunch of snowy cyclamens, which she idly plucked. Before her stood the young presbyter, Onesimus, clad like his master in flowing white, with black sandal straps braided halfway to the knee, a sword hanging by a gold cord from his neck, his hair as gold as the cord but cut short to the neck after the Greek fashion, his deep blue eyes gazing at the Princess as he would read her soul. Onesimus had grown to powerful manhood in these seven years since he left Paul at Rome.
She sat silent, thinking, but what she thought, he could not follow. There was a fifing of insects from the dry grasses, that bordered the garden walks. As the sun set over the blue green lake and the orange hills beyond, the clamor of war from the cañon below dulled and fell like the subsiding waves of an angry sea. She turned her seal ring round and round, and drew it from her finger as if to pass it to him. She pressed it to her lips.
“Will this be amulet to keep you from all harm?” she mused.
The young presbyter trembled.
“My Unseen King will keep me from all harm,” he answered; “and I dare not wear it till we are united for His Kingdom.”
“Look,” she said, “the Evening Star—Isis. The dewdrops are her tears.”
“ ’Twas the Star brought the Wise Men of the East,” he answered, “and there shall be no more tears in His Kingdom.”
An awful loneliness and an awful loveliness seemed to envelop her fragile form.
The young presbyter drew towards her as if to wrest her from her Dead Sea hopes and take her to that Unseen Kingdom with violent hands.
“Where have you been with the great Apollos, these long long years, my Onesimus?” she dreamily asked.
“To Babylonia and Assyria aiding the greatest apostle of all—Peter,” he answered.
“He, who lied and denied his leader and cut the High Priest’s servant’s ear off at the trial long years ago, as I have heard the Queen Herodias tell?” she asked.
“Say rather, Princess, he who learned in sin his own weakness, and whose great heart grew tender for all who fall in slippery places. He learned not to trust his own strength even in love, but—God’s.”
She pondered that absently plucking the cyclamens; and her hands were slender as the lily stems. The silver clouds rolled from below and the translucent water lay a painted sea.
“What does your Master Apollos teach? How differs he from the others?”
“I’ll answer that as Paul answered years ago in Rome, when Ephesus and Corinth wrote to know whether they should follow Paul, or Apollos. Paul followed the Nazarene. Apollos professed John, the Baptist; and when the followers would have wrangled one against another, and so missed the news of the Glad Kingdom in strife, Paul wrote back—’twas but a few years before Nero slew him—Paul plants; Apollos waters; God gives the increase!”
“You speak as a gardener.”
“I am, dear Princess— We are all gardeners, gardeners in the field of flowers which the Persians call ‘Ardath’—the Garden of God called Paradise.”
“I like that. I can understand that better than an Unknown Kingdom not made with hands! That Garden kind of Kingdom would be Glad News to me, Onesimus! I could wander through that kind of Garden, forever, if I had hold of your hand! Sit at my feet, dear playmate of the long ago, and tell me of your Garden—no, sit by my side, I would hold your hand now!”
She drew him down to the ivory bench beside her. He flushed as deep as the rose-tinted mountains in the setting sun.
“Now tell me of your Garden called Paradise, while I can feel your thoughts flowing into mine through the palm of your hand. This is Paradise enough for me.”
“Your hand, dear Princess, throbs too hard for the peace of that Garden. It is a Garden where there is eternal light, nor suffering, nor care, nor sorrow, nor dark, nor sleep to miss one hour of joy.”
“That, too, I like,” she said. “Let us not miss this hour of joy.”
“It is watered by the Rivers of Eternal Life. God’s thoughts are the seeds. They bloom in human flowers. ’Tis ours to keep those human flowers from running into poisonous weeds. The flowers of this your earthly garden are fixed by roots, where they are planted, but the human thought seeds have power of choice like wings to bear them where they will to go; and I would that you would will to join our Unseen Garden, not made with hands but thoughts—”
She drew his hand between her breasts and drank his eager gaze like one athirst.
“See yonder above the Sea is Istarte, the Evening Star of love, Onesimus! Will love dwell in our garden there as it shone in the Garden of Daphne long ago, when first I read your dear blue eyes?”
“The God of Love is the Sun of that Garden, Princess,” he answered, gently loosening her passionate grasp and placing in her emptied palm the cyclamens she had let fall. “You bade me tell you of that Garden and Apollos’ teaching. You know how the caves and grottos of the Jordan from the Dead Sea to Damascus are filled with the Nazarenes, who have fled from the siege of Jerusalem, which our Lord foretold. In all the cities of Decapolis, Apollos preached in the Temples of the Sun. You know these cities of the Greeks love and worship the Sun; but it was the Son of God, Apollos preached, which John the Hermit foretold; and so when the priests had sung the psalms, Apollos would sound out in his great thunder voice like a silver trumpet: ‘Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates, and let the King of Glory in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of angel hosts, He is your King of Glory’; and when the multitude had settled to listen, he would tell them of Ardath, the Garden of God in Paradise, where God’s thoughts are seeds and bloom in human flowers. Once, I mind, when a woman came weeping whose child had been slain in the siege as she escaped, after she heard Apollos she left the Temple rejoicing because her child had become a flower of light in the Garden of God; and a lover, whose bride had been slain, went out, weeping no more, because his bride was not dead, but waiting him in the Garden of God; and a soldier mad with remorse that his cruelty had killed his wife left all calmed because he had faith she, too, had gone to the Garden and had sent him Apollos to teach the way.”
Bernice plucked the snowy cyclamens again from their stems. Her slim hand trembled.
“Show me the way, Onesimus.”
Her voice was so low he had to bend across her slender figure to catch the words.
“There is no other way but to repent, be baptized, leave off sin and follow the Light of the Eternal Son.”
So absorbed were the lovers they did not see the tall white figure of the great teacher Apollos approaching on the path, accompanied by the Princess Drusilla.
“What is—this thing you call sin, my Onesimus? Is it sin for me to love you as I do?”
“Sin is the shadow of self, shutting out the light of God.”
She pondered that. “And when I love you so you turn all life to rosy mist, do I love self?” she asked.
“Sin is anything that holds us in the realm of shadows, away from God. It may be crime that fetters us in blind dungeons without bars like the Queen Herodias up there in the turret. It may be gayety. It may be wealth. It may be fear. It may be love of flesh, or power. It may be anxious want. It may be doubt; but it is always shadow of self.”
“And what is repentance? Would it cut me off from you?”
“No, but it would cut you off from planning to gain power by snaring the Roman General yonder. Repentance is to cancel sin by sinning no more, forsaking self and following Light.”
She threw her bare arms about his shoulder. “But if I gained Titus, the Emperor’s son, I could have you too, Onesimus! You offer me a Shadow Kingdom I cannot see or touch with hands. I aim at Rome.”
“You aim, beloved, at the image of clay and iron seen by the Prophet Daniel; and even now the iron is falling from the clay and the image is crumbling down. The other Kingdom is of gold and light and eternity. . . .”
Two shadows fell athwart where they sat, and the Princess Bernice drew back, while the young presbyter rose. Unutterable pain was on his baffled face. Apollos in his flowing white garments cast a long giant shadow between them. His back was towards the bench and so was the figure of the Princess Drusilla. The towering Apostle with the white hair and white beard had raised his shepherd’s crook and was pointing to the rose-tinted peaks swimming in mystic fire of clouds and light; and as he pointed his upraised staff and arms cast a shadow of the cross between the young presbyter and the slim daughter of the last of the Herods.
“Yonder,” he was saying in a voice so like a silver trumpet that traditions have come in Crete to this day that when he spoke all the silver bells of the temple service rang, “Yonder are the mountains of the wilderness, where our Christ was tempted. First, He was tempted to satisfy the hungry cravings of wearied and faint flesh. Then, He was tempted to try out whether God was God enough to save Him from rash slips; and then he was offered all the kingdoms of the earth and their pageantry as in a dream. . . .”
“And why didn’t He accept the challenge as a Roman would?” asked the Princess Drusilla in a cold, hard, calculating voice. “If He could have proved His Kingdom instead of going to the Cross like a felon, I’ve heard the Queen Herodias say all Judea would have risen and rallied to Him and thrown off Rome. . . .”
“Because the power given Him of God was not for service of self, but to lead men back to God. We may not make playthings of miracles for self,” he said.
“So if the Queen Herodias will not acknowledge your God, you cannot cure her madness?” demanded Drusilla.
“Remorse is not repentance,” answered the Sage; and the two figures passed on down through the oleanders of the garden.
The rose-tinted misty mountains were wrapping them in shadow mantles of purpling folds. A cold wind blew up from the waters, still and glassy as a painted sea.
The young presbyter stood silent. Bernice shivered.
“How can you believe in your Unseen Kingdom, when your King was crucified, and his followers are now scattered from Judea to these caves?” she urged.
“Death is but a boat across another sullen Jordan to the Gardens of God,” he said, “and His Followers are scattered that they may scatter the seed for the Garden to spread here on earth. Already the scattered seed reaches from Rome to Ganges.”
“Where does Apollos go now?” she asked.
“To become preacher in Crete.”
“And you?”
“To join John, beloved of Christ, at Ephesus.”
“And you leave?”
“In an hour to travel in the cool of the night.”
Far north, they could see to the snowy peaks of Hermon, where the sheet lightning played. The clanking of forges plied in the valley below on engines of war for the siege of Jerusalem, echoed like silver bells from cavern and grotto. The pungent flower-drugged air had odor of temple incense, and the breeze was as a cool hand laid on a fevered brow. The shadows etched themselves clearer in the translucent depths of the emerald Sea. The young presbyter’s lips were moving as in prayer. Princess Bernice roused herself as if to throw off dreams.
“ ’Tis not I who tempt you, Onesimus, with flesh, or daring, or power. ’Tis you, who tempt me to abandon the last of the Herod line for a shadow Kingdom. My brother, King Agrippa, the last of the Herods, is with Titus besieging the rebellious Zealots of Jerusalem. I’ll get my bodyguard, Julius, and join your caravan, and go with you.”
The young man’s face lighted up as a brow in sunrise.
Out under the arched gate they rode in the moon’s silvered dark, Apollos in a litter on a camel, leading down the narrow precipitous causeway. The Princess Bernice, too, rode a camel, but her form was swathed in cloak; and the old Idumean rode before her on Arab horse, while the young presbyter walked by her side. He carried his sword in his hand.
Down the narrow bridle path from the causeway led the road to the Jordan and Jericho and Jerusalem, scarce broad enough for the beasts, steep and winding as a circular stair. Once where the way narrowed so that those on stirrups had to dismount and only the camels kept sure footing, the Idumean dismounted and held back to give right of way to the Princess’ beast, before he turned his own horse and the young presbyter’s free to let themselves down on their haunches.
“Well rid of her! Well rid of her!” grumbled the old man. “If she had not been going off with you, I would not have let her go. Have you no other Nazarene teachers can rid me of the other two? Had she attempted to escape to Titus, the General’s son, I would have cut her throat.”
Down, down, the narrow winding way, the caravan descended, and where the hot brooding malarial air of the Jordan smote them, the pebbly shaly path turned to clay trampled to mire by the refugees fleeing the siege for open desert and rocky cave. The current was dark and sullen and flowed with the hurrying rage of human passion driving to the nemesis of its own destiny. The heat was hideous and the din deafened thought.
At the ford of the sullen dark river, they paused to water their beasts, and mounting his horse, the young presbyter rode abreast the Princess’ camel and signaled the Idumean to ride for her safety on the other side.
“So would I ride with you through the Gates of Death, my Princess,” he whispered, leaning towards the white face in the muffled cloak. “ ’Twas here Christ was baptized and tempted of Self and the Evil One, and renounced all earthly power to save men for the Glad Kingdom. You, too, another time in safer place shall join our ranks by the sacred rite of baptism, my Bernice.”
But the white face answered never a word. She reached out her arm, where she sat, and touched his brow with a hand cold as death. Then the caravan plunged in the ford. The horses swam and scattered slightly, heading downstream with the waves, but the camels kept footing and floundered. As the beasts came panting up the far bank in a thicket of willows and oleanders, the Idumean led to force the way, for the narrow road past Jericho was packed with a slow-moving mass of fleeing women and children and aged, escaping from the siege of the Holy City on Zion Hill.
Apollos, the great master, rode back abreast the Princess, and the presbyter, Onesimus, led her camel afoot.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, know that the desolation thereof is nigh,” Apollos said. “Let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains. They shall fall by the edge of the sword. They shall be led away captive into all nations. Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles. When these things begin to come, then look up, and lift up your heads; for redemption draweth nigh. Know you Who spoke those words, your Highness?”
But the Princess answered never a word; for her heart was cold with fear of the sights she saw as in a shadow by the silver starlight. Where Herod’s Pleasure Gardens had lain at Jericho, was such a press of soldiers, they could not approach the city gates. The clank of the forges for the engines of war had become as the rumble of thunder or earthquake. Where she knew the Holy City must stand on Zion Hill, she could discern only the blaze of towers and uptossing in midsky of flaming javelin and torch to throw destruction inside the city walls; and as the caravan advanced through the press of legion and cohort in serried ranks of helmet and breastplate and spear, the narrow ascending mountain road lay thick in a screen of smoke with a sickening odor of burning she had not known could exist outside the purlieus of a nether world.
The old Idumean came back and wheeled his horse beside her.
“We cannot get through the press though I break the pate of every head under helmet,” he said. “We shall have to fork to the right for the Damascus Road past the General’s tent.”
“What is the smell of burning?” she asked, leaning forward from the muffle of her camel.
“The dead! They are burning the dead as they throw them out over the walls in Gehenna Valley,” answered the old soldier; “and this road is swimming in blood coming down the walls. The soldiers tell me it is swimming in blood to the horses’ bridles beneath Olivet.”
“Fear nought, Princess,” called the young presbyter, remounting his horse to guard the rear, “you are only escaping a world that plays all men false”, and they pressed on, taking the road that forked north of the city.
Daylight dim with fog and smoke and the dust of battle saw them on the crest of the highway that led north from the Holy City towards either Cæsarea on the Sea, or Damascus in the far snowy mountains.
They paused again to breathe their spent camels and horses.
Bernice signaled the young presbyter.
“I would have your Arab horse,” she said. “I cannot ride this beast. He is spent.”
Onesimus helped her to dismount the panting camel and take place on his own horse, fresh because he had ridden little. He felt the tremor of her slender form as he helped her to saddle. Far as eye could see were tents on the heights and plains: but the Holy City they could not see for the fog of smoke and dust and mist.
One great yellow tent spacious enough to house a thousand men lay not a hundred yards to the left of their road. Above it blew the eagle pennants of Rome.
“On,” shouted the old Idumean, “we are safe here. That is the General’s tent. They have paused because this is the Jewish Sabbath and they parley for surrender. To-day will see their Holy City fall and ring to our trumpets’ victory.”
The caravan moved slowly forward. Soldiers rose sleepily where they lay on the ground and saluted the old Idumean. The camels moved through the mist in grotesque ghosts. Myriad tents were myriad island peaks in the lifting morning mist. Then the sun outburst over the rose-tinted mountains of Moab in the east; and the trumpets blew in a million echoes through glen and grotto.
Mountains and plains seemed to awaken with myriad soldier forms from ground and tent. Their metal helmets gave back the morning light in silvered fire. As the trumpets blew their silvery blasts amid the echoing rocks, the young presbyter’s horse reared in panic terror. The Idumean and the young presbyter sprang to snatch at the bridle. ThePrincess threw out her arm and struck the trembling creature a blow on its flank with the bridle rein. It bounded in mid-air and fled as on winged feet straight for the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
The old Idumean came a-sprawl on the ground, rolled over and sprang up with his helmet awry. The astounded young presbyter had retained his seat on the wearied camel, but gazed after the fleeing form as one who has received his death blow.
“A curse upon her and all her vixen foxy Herod brood,” raged the old man, getting stiffly to his feet. “I might have known it was a trick when she said she would go to the Grecian Isles with you.”
The caravan moved forward again. The old Idumean was galloping furious as his Arab horse could leap in wild bounds towards the General’s tent. Just as the sunlight burst in a shield of fire over the embattled hosts, the young presbyter looked back.
The old Idumean had thrown himself from his horse and stood with drawn lance across the door to the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
“And because Peter erred through love in a slippery place, it gave his great heart tenderness for all who trust in flesh,” said Apollos. Then he smiled gently at his young presbyter. “The old Idumean is closer to truth though he fell hard and cursed as Peter, than this Princess, blinder in the fetters of her own wiles than the Queen Herodias, prisoner back in the Fort,” he said. “We all have to learn by errors, Onesimus, but it makes the way longer; and he who follows truth by a circling road, comes out where he began.”