CHAPTER IIITHE SWORD AND THE SUNBURST
If a woman is forced by the chain of circumstances to barter her love for power—is she justified in bartering herself to the highest bidder?
That was the thought that chased through the Princess Bernice’s brain in a dizzy whirl, when she struck her horse, and bolted from the missioner’s caravan to force herself on the notice of the Roman Emperor’s son and make such bargain as she could with her own charms for coin to save herself and her brother—the King—from ruin. Had she ever known a day of freedom of choice from early girlhood, when she had been sold to one old husband to steady a tottering throne, to opening womanhood, when widowed, she had again been sold like a slave on the shambles to another aged and repugnant spouse to win alliance to strengthen that same insecure throne? And when she had fled from that second aged buyer on plea of religious vow, her name had been dirt under the feet of the very beggars on the street—a byword among the Jews and a joke among the actors of the Roman theaters in all the known world. If the world would hound her to lawlessness for refusing to bow to legalized slavery, she would accept the challenge and bid for a power that would put the world under her feet and reduce the dogs, who barked, to lick her very hands.
“Dogs—dogs—dogs!”—she hated the whole scheme of life, that made of her love and womanhood a pawn to lust and power. ’Twas all very well for the Christian presbyter and the great revivalist to hurl anathemas at her sin; but was the sin hers, which had forced her down in the cesspools of lustful slime? If the world had made her sin, she would take toll of the world for her sin and exact tribute that would compensate her loss for the sin.
Rebel? Yes, she knew she was rebel; but who had turned her into rebel? If she could not fight Rome, she would exact price from Rome, by beating it at its own ruthless gamble for power. To be sure, the presbyter and the revivalist had offered her refuge from Rome in a Shadowy Kingdom not made with hands; but had the God of that Shadowy Kingdom reached down miraculous hand and saved her from the price she had already paid? Could all the tears of repentance and sorrow for that past—which was not her fault—wipe out the memories that seared her soul a quivering red? The great revivalist had warned it was she who was tempting the young Greek convert of the New Faith. Tempting? She laughed; and struck her frantic horse again with all the vicious strength in her woman arm. It was she, who had been tempted by a type of love she had not dreamed could exist in the world of men; and what could she give back for that type of love—now? An assoiled thing with drugged memories, which all the waters of Dead Sea hopes and useless tears could not wipe out. How easily she could have drawn the young Greek convert’s lips to her own and drawn his soul through those lips and held it enchained forever in enchanted fetters he did not dream! She loved him too well to make of his life what fate had made of hers.
She laughed now because she was forever past tears. She struck the horse again and again because she would have made all living creatures suffer a little of what she was suffering; and she could have screamed in such a fury of incarnate demon exultation as the warrior women of the barbarians screamed when they tortured fallen foe— She would have laughed if the horse had stumbled and caused her death—that, at least, would be going down with defiance in the very teeth of fate; but a frantic horse on devil’s errand somehow does not stumble. It carries us into the very pit of fate.
It was just as the mists of morning were rising that some of the soldiers stirred uneasily in their sleep to the echo of the trumpets and bugles sounding reveille and the sharp iron-shod pound of the two horses ridden at furious pace over the flinty rocks. Some of them sat up wearily. A few commanders sprang to their feet, sword in hand. Their first thought was of fresh dispatches from Rome, or word of surrender from the besieged Holy City. What they decried through the rising gauzy mist was the figure of a woman leaping from her horse in front of the commander’s tent, followed by a soldier throwing himself from his horse across her way and thrusting his lance before the tent entrance. Not thus had refugees escaping over the walls of the besieged city by rope come to the Roman for permission to seek safety in the caves beyond the Dead Sea.
The officers smiled in hard contempt. The soldiers laughed, an ugly suggestive laugh. They laughed because they knew that while the war lasted, if a goddess had come garbed as a woman, she would not be received in that tent. They trusted, loved and idolized their commander as they would a god, and already openly talked of Titus as the army’s future Emperor, when the cares of Rome from Gaul to Ganges would have worn out his father, Vespasian.
The Roman Legions lay encamped on valley and hill in front of Jerusalem. Seven months now had they besieged the Holy City from Passover Week in spring when a million Hebrews from every country in the known world had come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the birth of their nation from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. It was now the golden summer season, which we know as the end of August and opening of September. Russet mist shimmered on earth and sky. As the sun rose over the red mountain rims of Moab far to the east of the Dead Sea, the gauzy clouds took to themselves wings and rose to mid-heaven, white as the snow of Hermon in the north, and joyous as the lark’s greeting to newborn day.
Seven long months the Roman Legions had beaten with their huge engines of war against the three impregnable walls of the Holy City. Beleaguered and assailants were both exhausted and had appointed this day a truce; for it was the Jewish Sabbath. The besieged citizens would long since have surrendered to Rome; for Rome had given them peace and prosperity and security in their own Hebrew laws for a hundred years; but the mad Zealot Robber Bands and Short Sword Ruffians, known as the Sicarii, who had seized the city twenty-thousand strong Passover Week to plunder in the name of Liberty from Roman yoke, when all the Temple Chests were filled with gold tribute from Jews the world over, knew that surrender meant death, and holding all the arms of the city, kept the gates of the three unscalable walls locked against Roman entry or citizens’ escape. Escape was possible only by leaping or dropping ropes from the high walls. Women were held prisoners in the houses, as cattle for slaughter are hemmed in shambles, to force the obedience of the men to the mad Zealot Robber Bands. He who threw himself from the broad parapet of the upper walls and missed death in the frantic leap, saw all his kin flung forcibly over after him by the Zealots, into the bloody moat beneath the southern precipice, where the slow burning fires of Gehenna had already consumed more than six hundred thousand Jews.
But all was peace of parley this calm Sabbath morning.
Not a watcher appeared on the broad top of the walls from the Temple on the east to the three Towers of Herod on the higher Zion to the west. The world of fighters slept in the dead exhaustion of men who had lived in armor day and night for seven months. The footmen of the Roman Legions sprawled on the ground, helmets and face pieces still fastened, metal armor still buckled to breast and thigh. The horsemen lay with heads pillowed on saddles, their beasts stretched on the ground beside them, bridle rein crooked in their elbows, shields thrown for protection across their lower limbs. The huge battering rams, which the Romans had hauled up to the walls and mounted on hurdles of trees and rocks and sod, rested suspended in mid-air, the giant beams hanging over the wall for first blow the next day, with rams’ heads of solid iron twisted and torted from the smash of seven months’ ceaseless work. Where the cable, that hauled back the beam coiled round a horizontal windlass, had been tied to a stake driven in the ground, a hundred ropemen lay in a sleep dead as death. The great catapaults, with jaws of a giant leviathan gripping rocks for the toss over the walls, also hung silent and still against the calm sky, with more cables fast to ground stages and more fighters asleep with hands not a finger length from the ropes for the call to fresh fight, when the trumpets should sound.
North of Jerusalem, far as eye could see on mountain and plain, was a yellow tent city of Roman Legions grouped round one large marquee on the central ridge, above which gleamed the ensigns of the Emperor’s son, Titus, the gleaming eagle in brass on a lofty pole in front of the commander’s quarters.
The woman and the soldier stood facing each other with blazing eyes before the commander’s tent. The man did not speak. If Rome won, he would not risk his head by letting her pass. If Rome failed, neither would he risk his neck by offence to an imperious mistress, who was not wont to be stopped in her will.
Their eyes blazed. Both breathed hard.
“Down with that lance.” The woman’s order was emphasized with a stamp. She had tossed aside her black cloak, revealing royal purple below and her right hand sought the pearl-handled dagger in the gold cord round her waist.
“The Emperor sleeps, Princess,” the soldier gasped back. “One to win favor, had best not disturb the tired conqueror unannounced.”
“Liar,” she said with the quick gleam of an angry comet, “drop your spear.”
The tent curtain lifted. An unarmed man in royal vesture like her own emerged as if dazed from sleep.
The Idumean’s lance went up with a flash in the sun, butt on ground, point in air, held by hand as of an unseeing statue. The hair of the man in the tent doorway curled unkempt and damp with night sweat on his brow. He was unshaven and bent, unlike soldier mien, as if crushed with burdens too heavy to be borne. He was still in the drowse of heavy sleep.
“Bernice—Princess—Sister,” he ejaculated. “Are you ghost—or flesh? In the name of all the gods of Rome, how came you—here?”
“Aye—how came her Highness here?” angrily repeated the old Idumean guard. “And my life was sworn to hold the two Princesses and the Queen Herodias safe in Machærus Fort beyond Jordan while the war lasts; but she tricked me by tale of joining some Nazarene Christians going to the Isles of Greece; and when the caravan passed this way up from the Jordan, she broke from rank and wheeled her horse affrighted by the morning trumpets straight for the General’s tent.”
“Silence—fellow,” ordered the man. “Who gave you leave to speak? Come inside, my Sister!”
He lifted the tent flaps, and they passed in. There was not a soul inside all the great tent but a Sabean slave laying out his master’s armor for the day.
“My Brother—my King—Agrippa—last of the Herod line,” the woman opened her arms; and they embraced with the passion of the Herod line, that loved as it hated, with the hot blood of the torrid Arab strain.
“You may go,” the King ordered the man.
Left alone, he turned to the Princess.
“What means this—mad—adventure, Sister?”
“It means, dear Brother, that the Herod women will no longer endure to be cooped like sheep to be eaten by wolves yonder in Machærus Fort! Herod women are of the lion line, my King! They fight not in cornered walls. They crouch and spring for the foe’s throat, and never wait for any foe to strike first.”
“Dangerous words, if Rome overhears,” said he.
“Have you forgotten how, from the male side, we spring from the unconquered Arab, and from the other side from Mariamne, daughter of the greatest of the Hebrew high priests?” demanded the Princess. “Have you forgotten when the Great Herod would have broken Mariamne to his imperious will, she defied him; and when he slew her, she came back and haunted him till she drove him mad in that same Machærus Fort? Have you forgotten how the great Imperial Cæsar called Herod to Rome, and Herod would not lower eye or knee in presence of Imperial Rome; and how for his fearless courage he won respect of all the Senate in Rome and gained the Kingdom of Judea, which our Royal House has held from that day to this? When did Herods win a kingdom by cringing in fear? Not thus are kingdoms won, Brother! Old Queen Herodias grows madder every day with dreams of the Hermit John’s head slain in the dungeons there. Sister Drusilla, who has ever been jealous of me being younger and your favorite, swears she will join her husband Felix, whether he is in Rome, or among the barbarians. Know you not if the Romans win here, the secret Zealots and Sicarii Sword Ruffians in the Fort there on the Dead Sea will rise and cut our throats for loyalty to Rome; and if the Romans lose here, they will tear us to pieces with bloody hands and feed us to the dogs beneath the city walls?”
The man’s head sank forward despairingly.
“You should have been King in my place, little lioness! Rome’s luxuries in youth have softened my Herod daring. I am no longer wild Arab of the desert willing to wade waist deep in blood to power. I crave no more kingship, but rest and peace.”
“Then—confess it not,” scouted the Princess.
“But I do confess it. I am weary of fighting for a kingdom to do as Rome bids! If Rome fails, we are lost. If Rome wins, all Judea will be ravaged from Galilee to the Dead Sea, and every city put up on the auction block to the highest soldier bidder, slave or free. Know you our royal revenues all come from the tribute taxes of these cities? Only Felix, the freed slave, sister Drusilla’s husband, had cunning to foresee. We of the royal line have been blinded by our own ambition and mistook a shadow kingdom for the real. We are only weak shadows of Rome. As waves Rome’s arm of command, so jumps our obedient shadow. Rome is crumbling like a colossal image of clay. Only Felix laid him away gold enough in strong iron chests to buy a villa down on Naples Bay, where I had planned to send Sister Drusilla to her husband; and the Queen Herodias on to her lord in banishment in Spain.”
“And what did you plan to do with me?” asked the Princess, with the eye of a harrier hawk on a weakling bird.
“Trust Titus’ mercy! You have ever been favorite with him. He likes your wild daring; but dare not too much! We have been loyal to Rome. . . .”
“Mercy?” the Princess Bernice laughed. “Is that the Great Herod’s voice I hear in the last of the Herod line? Do you also plan to march with shackles on hands and balls on feet behind the conqueror’s car under the Triumphal Arch at Rome?”
“Sister, dearest Princess, my lioness,” answered King Agrippa, caressing his sister’s hands. “Have you forgotten how a year ago we stood on the Bridge of Fate that runs from the temple roof across the middle lower city to Herod’s palace on the west, to plead with the high priests to stem this revolt against Rome; and the whole populace of Jerusalem took up stones to kill us? Only the height of the bridge saved our lives. Have you forgotten the shameful names they shouted at you—Rahab, they called you—a Herod Princess—because you had left your ancient spouse up in Cilicia and came down to pay your vows in Jerusalem—you, my Queen sister, the daughter of the high priests back to Aaron? Have you forgotten the insults they hurled at me, for defending you—my favorite Sister—though never Herod did more for the Jews than I have done? What would you if we trust not Titus’ gratitude?”
“Gratitude,” the Princess harshly laughed. “Gratitude, the sour-milk diet of weakling fools and coward hopes.” She drew back from her brother and screened her face by throwing her purple cloak over her shoulder as she spoke. “What would I do? I’d do what every high priest’s woman has had to do since Miriam, Aaron’s sister, beat the timbrels of victory on the Red Sea. I’d rule the man! I’d ride with the conqueror in his car beneath Rome’s Arch of Triumph! I’d turn a shadow kingdom into a real earth power ruled with iron grip though it were fleshed in woman. They call us—weak.” She laughed again.
“I’d send Drusilla with her dove-cooing love to her slave husband Felix on Naples Bay. I’d send the old drooling Queen Herodias to her doting failure of a spouse in Spain to waste their souls away in vain regrets; but I’d strike, and I’d strike now, straight at Titus’ heart for the throne of Rome. . . .”
“Not that—not that way, my Queen, my Sister,” her brother drew back in horror. “Know you what names the populace call you, my royal Sister?”
“A curse on these barking dogs! What care I for the curs of the gutter? He who fights curs, finds himself snarling in their gutter. We Herods have given Judea security for a hundred years. What have they given us? They have snapped hands that fed them royal bread, free. Let the Romans conquer and throw every Judean over the walls to the fires of Gehenna, or sell the seditious slaves to Egypt for the price of dogs. Think you, beloved Brother, that I have not sacrificed love for power? I left the only man that ever I loved in my life but you—my King, to break from the caravan to the Isles of Greece, and come to Titus, here. Yes, the Greek slave—Onesimus, from whom you parted me in the Gardens of Daphne long ago, now grown to man majestic as a gladiator! He offered me the shadow kingdom of his Christ, and my weak heart might have yielded to that love had I not seen the Emperor’s tent here when the mist rose; but I would not drop the real kingdom of Rome within our grasp for all shadow kingdoms of all the prophets since time began. What have the prophets done for us, Brother? Show me a kingdom I can grasp; and I’ll close my clutch on what I feel. I grasp not rainbows, my Agrippa!”
King Agrippa sank to his cot with his face in his hands.
“If you ride with the Emperor in his chariot under the Triumphal Arch, know you what Rome will say?”
“And what do I care what Rome says? Can Rome say worse than these Judeans have shrieked as we rode through the streets? What care I what Roman rabble bawls if I rule Rome? With the army in Titus’ strong hands, the Senate will eat from our hands, whipped curs. Where is Titus? Take me to him, Brother! We can save the last of Herod’s line.”
King Agrippa rose irresolute. The Princess had stung him to action; but one, who must be stung to action, must be kicked on by prods in action.
“That I cannot, Sister Bernice, though you were Queen of Heaven.” King Agrippa began pacing the tent. “We have a remnant of the Roman garrison secure in the three great Towers of Herod, whence the Zealots and Sicarii Sword Ruffians have been unable to drive them out—they are our old loyal garrison of a year ago; and they have ample water in the roof cistern, to hold out till we go in. That’s why our engines have avoided throwing rocks at the west Towers. With them are three of the Nazarenes who refused to be driven to revolt. Our spies tell us these Nazarenes have rescued all the sacred scrolls from the Ruffians now in the Temple to the east, and carried them for safe-keeping to Herod’s Towers by the secret Aqueduct that runs from beneath the Temple to Herod’s Palace on the west. You would be safe there; but I—cannot—take you there. The Overhead Bridge from the Temple to the Palace has been smashed by the great rocks we have been throwing over the walls, and the Aqueduct from the Altar to the Palace is filled with rotting dead and plunder—the rebel bands drove the high priests under, and cut their throats in the Aqueduct, and the Temple floor now swims in blood. . . .”
“And think you, Brother, my feet are so dainty they would spurn to wade in the blood of these dogs or trample the rotting bodies of high priests to gain our end? Have you forgotten how Herod the Great had strangled, beneath the baths of Machærus, his wife’s brother, who was High Priest, to gain his end; and how when his best loved wife taunted him with murder and turned from him in hate, though he loved her to madness, he slew her, too, and stopped at naught to make his throne secure? I am such a Herod daughter! Shall we let slip what he paid such price to gain?”
The King’s brows knitted deep. Though scarce past mid-life, he bent with the impotence of fate too powerful for him to master.
“Princess, I cannot risk the General’s anger if we disobey his orders. There is truce to-day. It is the Jewish Sabbath. The Emperor is for mercy and letting famine force surrender. We have the city hemmed on every side. They must surrender or starve. But the army will not hear of another day’s delay! It will hurt our Emperor’s prestige! We shall marshal all our strength this day to show the Jews inside, there cannot escape one living soul from our circle of fire and sword. If they surrender not to-night, neither old nor young, nor man nor woman, shall escape the sword; and when the sword is dulled of slaughter, all others will be sold as slaves. The soldiers are now down in the burning moat stealing coins from the dead to buy slaves at the price of a dog, and not a man in rank dare break the truce on pain of death! The General and his young lieutenant, Trajan, are in the turrets of Antonia’s Tower next to the Temple. Titus has not left off to lead for one hour from Passover Week. Till victory perches on his eagle, he does not know that woman exists; and if he did, he’d bid his soldiers knock her on the head!”
“Pah!” she laughed. “You know not woman’s power on man.”
“But this is no man—Titus is iron, my Sister—I occupy his tent alone! Not one night for seven months has he slept in his bed; or known rest; or taken off his armor. He is soldier now, and not lover dangling on a woman’s whim. He fights hand to hand with Jews. Last night we had mined from Antonia’s Tower under the Holy of Holies, and if the Jews do not surrender this eventide, we break through. The orders are to slay and slay. The Jews suspect. They must have heard our pickaxes below the Temple breaking a hole in the wall of the foundation. Their soldiers crowd all the upper galleries of the Temple to pour down boiling pitch and set fire if we enter. Our spies tell us even now these swine Zealots lie in stupor drunk with the holy wine mixed with Roman blood all over the sacred Temple floor. One, son of Lazarus of Bethany, escaped from the walls by rope last night, and told us the rotting dead pile the streets, and the living pace pale shadows faint from famine; and when the Zealots broke into the houses of the prisoned women to search for food one Jewess of Arabian Petra fed these ravening beasts her own child boiled for flesh; and then laughed and told them, and stabbed herself to death raving vengeance.”
Sister and brother paused and gazed desperately in each other’s eyes.
“There is no hope but to trust the Roman Emperor’s mercy,” repeated King Agrippa.
“Rome’s mercy!” Princess Bernice laughed, and her voice was hard as sword striking metal. “Sheep for hungry wolves! Would Herod the Great have hesitated and whined ‘mercy, mercy,’ to wolves, as we pause now, Brother of mine?”
“Herod the Great dealt not with Titus. He dealt with a cringing Senate. This Titus is a man.”
“Then, if he is man, I—am—woman. Know you what that means? Take me to Titus, though we wade in blood to our waists! Be not less than man, yourself. Shall my power be less because he is man? Do you remember your mad jealousy when we were younger? Do you think I’ll fail with him because he is man? I have had two weak kings for husbands! Now I aim for an Emperor.”
“Bernice—are you mad? Do you know the price you’ll have to pay?”
“Price? Fool!” she scouted. “Do I know the price I’ve paid to man since I was a little child? This time, I’ll get paid for all I barter if I have to cut his throat while he sleeps—”
“Woman—,” he threw his hand across her lips. “You risk both our lives with your mad talk.”
She drew his hand from her lips and kissed it as she drew back.
“Who go in as spies, Brother?” she pressed.
“Who risks his life?”
“I’ll risk my life—if you will do as much,” she urged.
“You would not have the royal line of the Herods creep into their kingdom spies?” he wavered; and in his wavering, she saw the triumph of her old power and laughed.
“I would have the royal Herod line creep through the fires of Hades to grasp a real kingdom instead of this shadow of Rome’s leavings,” she answered. “Go to the Tower of Antonia and get Titus’ permission! Tell him you have found a woman of the high priest caste who will go in as spy. Tell him she will take refuge in Mariamne’s Palace of the Herod Towers—to give her pass to the remnant of the Roman Garrison there! Tell him she will throw over the walls each day from the dovecots of the Queen’s Tower news of all that passes inside the walls.” She clapped her hands. The old Idumean came stiffly in.
“Julius, follow King Agrippa up to Antonia’s Tower. Take your station where the Roman sappers have mined the wall to the Temple. Bide there till I send you word by page lad! Sharp your short sword as you wait and get helmet that will meet your breastplate at the neck! Be sure to protect your neck—you’ve only one! When the lad comes ask no question! Leap through into the Temple and lift the pavement of the floor before the Altar into the Aqueduct. Drop the lad through below! Then escape for your life back through the hole in the wall! If you succeed, you shall have free farm and pension all your life. If you fail, your tongue shall be torn out!”
She smiled joyously as the old Idumean went out; and then she bade King Agrippa get her the garments of his page boy.
Toward the tenth hour of the stone dial in front of the Imperial tent, a page lad walked out following King Agrippa. He wore a cloak and his turban cap came down over his ears to his very eyes.
All the terraced garden below the outer walls had been cut to the roots. Palm and cactus and hedge and olive trees had gone to build the huge hurdles on which the idle battering rams stood suspended in mid-air. Just once the page paused and swayed as he followed the king going up to Antonia Tower. ’Twas where the Romans had torn down the first and second walls of the Holy City. On the angle of a projecting bastion on the inner third wall, where those on the parapet above could see, swung the rotting skeletons of five hundred Jews crucified hanging by their spiked hands. Their loose garments blew to the wind and the ravens still circled above the featureless blackening skulls. Where the battering rams rested motionless above the parapets, bags filled with sand and dripping inky pitch showed how the besieged had fought back by firing the hurdles and engines of war. Rumor ran through the Roman camp how an old blind follower of Herod the Great, let down by ropes to work he could not see, had fired and burned the first hurdles. But for the creaking of the ravens perched on the turrets of the towers and fighting over the black skulls, the silence was of an awfulness that was stabbed by every footfall. Once or twice the page saw gaunt figures on the wall top appear like phantoms and toss naked dead over to the burning moats below; and down in the burning moats could be seen ghoulish figures of the Roman Army searching the dead for coin to buy slaves in victory. A quick catch of breath broke from the page. King Agrippa looked sharply back but did not pause. Javelins, darts, broken arrows, bent spears, crumpled shields littered the dust where gardens had once terraced the hills. The ground was hot beneath the page’s sandals as though seethed in flame. By the Tower of Antonio in front of the Temple, trickles of red clotted blood black with flies ran out under the demolished walls.
Then, they had vaulted the clutter of crumbled stones in the lowest story of Antonia’s Tower where its east wall joined the Temple. Where the broken wall was plugged by plank and bag, a cohort of Romans stood guard silent as stone. The King raised his right hand. The old Idumean came forward so swathed in sheet of mail and leggings of chain greaves he could scarce be recognized but for the stiffness of his aged legs. In his right hand, he carried a long sword, in his left the short circular dirk such as the Sicarii Sword Ruffians inside bore. Not a word was uttered. The old soldier, disguised as Zealot, moved forward and pulled some bagging from the hole in the wall. Head first, then right leg, he stepped through the hole. With frantic look of appeal as a dumb brute going to its doom might cast in affectionate farewell to a loved master, the page glanced back at the pale face of King Agrippa. Then, he followed the disguised soldier through the hole in the wall and the Romans stuffed the bagging and plank back in place.
They were inside the sanctuary of the Holy Place.
The silence was of a tomb. Gone was the golden Altar. Gone were golden cherubim and seraphim above the Altar of which the Psalmist sang. Gone were the golden candlesticks in mystic sevens. Gone were the great golden basins and the brass brazier in which the priests had burned sacrifices for the people’s sins from the days of Solomon. Gone were the cunningly wrought tapestries of Damascus and Babylon in woven gold and blue and purple and scarlet, which veiled the Holy of Holies in mystic purity from profane gaze. Ax and sword had hacked the sheathing of gold and silver from the pillars to each side supporting the cloisters and galleries. And where were the mystic treasure boxes between pillars, in which the Jews hoarded the offerings of the faithful through the fateful centuries? The Babylonians had rifled these treasures long centuries ago; but they had left the treasure chests. So had Antiochus of the North; but even he could not destroy these great iron boxes, though he had offered swine upon that vanished altar; and when Herod the Great had restored the Temple, these treasure chests had been left filled and untouched for a hundred years. Again the page swayed as faint; for sprawled on the pavement floor lay drunken Sicarii Ruffians in the dead sleep of swinish debauch, with sword in one hand, the golden flagons and cups of the altar service in the other, and they slept on a floor thickening with human blood. A slight tremor ran through the Temple, as of an earthquake from the Dead Sea; or was it that the senses of the page swam at what he saw? The Temple pavement seemed to heave and sink. The great Golden Gate to the east—ninety feet it was in height—swung open as of unseen hands, flooding the horror with a burst of sunlight. The page covered his face with his hand. Was this the crumbling kingdom of reality for which one grasped, rejecting that other shadow kingdom not made with hands, but made of rest and peace and light and love and eternity?
Julius, the old Idumean, with one eye gleaming through his vizor on the swinish forms asleep, and his long sword in his right hand, was prying with the dirk in his left to hoist the stone that gave secret drop to the dry Aqueduct below. The stone lifted as on hinges. The old Idumean laid down his right-hand long sword, grasped the page by the neck, signaled him to catch the edge of the black hole for the drop and was still holding the trapdoor up, when either the tremor of the earthquake, or the flood of sunburst from the Golden Gate, disturbed the sleepers.
“Down, you tricky she-vixen of hell,” the Idumean hissed, “and hang by your hands, which I’ve trapped, till Rome rots.”
But Bernice, the Princess, had thrust up one arm in a sudden revulsion at the drop in the under dark and caught the descending trap door with the palm while she hung suspended by her right hand from the edge. The noise had roused the sleepers. They were on him with a howl of tigerish fiends. She saw him snatch at his long sword, miss it, leap back, strike out with his short dirk sword. The iron-shod boot slipped on the bloody floor. He fell with a crash of armor on stone. They sprang on his outstretched arms, his mail-clad legs, his metal breastplate, hacking at the chain thighs with their swords. Her last glimpse of the old Idumean was of him shoving his chin down to meet the breastplate and save his neck from their spears. Then a great broadsword crashed down. His metal head piece went bounding over the floor with a gush of livid blood. Her hand hold gave from the edge of the trap door. The stone slipped back to its place in the floor, and she dropped to bottom in the dark of the Aqueduct.
It was black as night. She paused to think which way was west. Which way lay the Herod Palace? Had she turned as she swung on the edge of the trapdoor—and dropped? Then back in her dim memories of all the glories of the Herod line—was it memory or a throwback of the mad daring blood in her own daring veins?—came half consciousness of how Herod the Great in like case let down by baskets into robber caves of Galilee, black as the night of this Aqueduct, had plunged on fearless in the dark, and driven the cave robber bands over the precipice to a man. She boldly advanced through the dark. By the feel of her feet, the stone footing beneath was descending. That, she knew must be wrong; for the dry Aqueduct was used to flush water from the Altar out east from the pools at the Palace west. She turned. The Aqueduct ascended. That must be right; for waters do not flow up; and it was the Palace pools that flushed the Aqueduct to drain the Temple, and she fled through the dark like a night demon. Was this the price she must pay for a kingdom of which not one stone would be left upon another by sunrise if the Jews did not surrender that very day to Rome? Fool! Judea was lost. It was at Rome she aimed.
Her foot tripped. ’Twas but the plundered gold of the Temple chests, she knew by the rattle of coin on stone; and she sped on through the dark. Then an odor struck her in the face that is like no other odor on earth. It was the odor of those long dead in damp. She swayed faint against the circular arch of the Aqueduct and like a flash in the night came memory of the tales of long ago—these were the high priests that Herodias’ lord had spurred to crucify the Christus of the Nazarenes. Her breath came in gasps. Was she to perish here haunted forever by that Christian cross, which the line of Herods had risked all to destroy in order to perpetuate a crumbling kingdom? Her sandal touched a soft and naked thing. She leaped over the tangled mass of unseen putrid flesh and ran till her forward right hand touched bronze gate beneath the Towers of Herod’s Palace.
Three raps she gave, and then four, in the mystic number of the Hebrew seven. It was the Roman pass to deceive the Jews in their own mystic number. No answering sound came back.
She rapped again, three—then four—louder and yet louder and could hear her own muffled heart beats in the dark.
Had the old Idumean, whom she had tricked, perished trapping her in revenge? Her heart beat till she thought her temples would burst; and she saw as in colored fires the bloody head of the Hermit John, who had taunted Herodias to madness; the ghostly wraith of Mariamne, Herod’s murdered wife; the pale face of the Nazarene, James, whom her own Herod husband had ordered stoned to death—then circles of fire went whirling before her eyes and in the circles a fiery cross with the crucified figure of that Son of Man—she screamed and beat on the bronze door with her hands.
It seemed a century before seven faint taps sounded back from the other side of the door.
She rapped again frantically, beating the door with her clenched fist and screaming “ ’Tis I—Princess Bernice—open—open—open the doors! For the love of God, open the doors.”
Then she sank to her knees, with the fiery circles whirling in her dying consciousness, and in the midst of the circles ever the dangling figures of crucified men on a wall. The bronze door creaked, and rasped, and swung open. A Roman soldier, wan with hunger, stood in the dim light. He fell back as if from a ghost and would have clashed the bronze door shut; but she thrust the pass from Titus in his amazed hand and fainted across the threshold at his feet.
Must a woman ever pass through the portals of hell to gain her end?
She risked her mother’s life in gaining birth. She risked her own in giving birth; and was this the end? Why was woman accursed? Was there no redemptive power in all the long chain of circumstances to free her from the power of that ancient curse for grasping at the Tree of Life? What was life? ’Twas life she had snatched at and lo! a flaming sword of fire—circles of fire and in the center ever the cross of a crucified love. Then, in her delirium, Onesimus, her lover, was bending over her in the Garden of Ardath, the Paradise of Flowers; and every flower was a child’s soul; and through her veins ran a flame that did not burn but was of the very essence of light; and at her feet lay no Dead Sea of tears but ran with the laughing glad voice of many waters Rivers of Life—and their vesture was of the light of the very sun. They did not need to speak. They knew without words.
The flame was no longer fiery sword—it was golden light; and her lover was trying to tell her that light was love, golden as the dawn over the swimming mountains of Moab—over which they two seemed mounting in chariots of fire—when an unseen hand, white as fuller’s earth, snatched him from her—and she was falling—falling—falling—sinking with the dead weight of her humanity straight to that Dead Sea of tears—the laughter now was not the glad voice of many waters—it was the shrieking mockery of the Roman world. She was marching with ball on feet and gyves on wrists under the Triumphal Arch of Rome; and all Rome was pointing fingers of scorn at the naked captive daughter of the Herod kings; and the rabble dogs were snapping at the captive lines. She awakened with a piercing scream.
Was she living or dead? She was past caring. Let Fate do its worst. She looked up. Slowly she recognized one of the Palace chambers of Mariamne’s Tower; but whether the chambers were real or dream, she did not know. But seven months before, she and King Agrippa had fled from the threats of the populace beneath the Overhead Bridge to this very Tower. She had played in it as child, and wantoned in it as girl, and plotted in it as woman. She had drunk wine of life in that very Tower; and were these the lees of the wine, that at last would sting as a serpent? She sat up on her couch. Beside her stood the pale Roman soldier of the garrison and an aged Jewess. A mid-life man stood in the chamber door. An aged and venerable figure looked over her shoulder. One who seemed physician was pressing a brew to her lips.
“Who are these people?” she whispered faintly.
“Fear not, daughter,” gently answered the aged woman. “We are Nazarenes, followers of the Christ. It is no poison that Luke, the physician, would give you! He, too, is a follower of the Nazarene, though he is Greek. I am the mother of Mark, who has ever dwelt in Jerusalem. The aged apostle is Matthew, who used to gather taxes for the Romans.”
Then the instinct of fear, that haunted all the Herod blood and drove that blood from crime to crime, came over her awakening consciousness in a flood of memory; for had she not as girl stood on that Bridge between Temple and Palace when her own Herod kin had urged the Jewish mob to drag James, the crucified Christ’s kinsman, out to death by stone and spear? How she had laughed at the rabble then, and clapped her hands to see them hound the Nazarene preacher out from the Temple to his doom! And now that rabble, if they knew she was here, would tear her to pieces with bloody hands and throw her to the pavements for the dogs to lick her blood. And then the instinct of craft, that ran in her Herod blood, gave voice in question.
“Why do you call me daughter?” she whispered back.
And then she felt her hair which had fallen about her neck as she fled through the Aqueduct.
“Because Matthew, here, recognized you as King Agrippa’s sister. What word of the Roman Army? Will they win the last wall to-day? When we let down the baskets for food last night, the Zealots threw pitch bags and burned the ropes. We dare no longer venture out on the Palace parapet. They shoot fire arrows. And not one of us will leave the others. Whether we live, or whether we die, it is nothing, daughter! The Zealots may slay the body. They cannot slay the soul. But what tempted you to come through the Aqueduct, child? Is to-day the end?”
For answer, the silver trumpets blew from turret and tower, from hill and plain, from cavern and grotto. The group rushed from the chamber for the turret window.
“Bear my cot to the window,” she commanded, the old imperiousness of Princess and daughter of high priests surging back in her reviving consciousness.
Down sheer seventy feet from the turret window to the plain where the Roman Legions had mustered, they gazed—first Titus, the Emperor’s son, on a black stallion; then Trajan, his young officer, on a white horse; then her brother, King Agrippa, on a low Arab fawn-colored steed, all in trappings of brass with silver shields aslant the horses’ shoulders; then the standard bearers with the Roman eagle in gold; then the pikemen, clad in mail, with their long lances like fields of wheat; then the horsemen in darker mail with lances aslant like knives moving in rank; then the great engines of war that moved on wheels like erect walls; then the Macedonian mercenaries on foot, six and seven rank deep they wheeled and marched and countermarched; while one Josephus rode on a white charger up to the walls shouting out: “Why would they die and not surrender to the clemency of Rome?”
The cowed populace answered never a word, but the Zealots and swordsmen swarmed to the broad tops of the walls with hoots of derision. Stones rained down on the emissary for peace. They hissed his words with shameless insults, and bade the Romans not draw back in cowardice because this was Jewish Sabbath, but to come on and dare to try the third strong wall. When the peace emissary would have shouted again, those on the wall threw a naked dead body in his face.
The wild warrior blood of her Herod Arab ancestors surged through Bernice’s veins. She knew then the urge that had driven her through the Aqueduct. She could have leaped from the walls to join the Romans down there fighting in carnival of blood had she been man. Why had she been born woman—the tool—instead of man, the hand that wielded the tool? She knew she was a rebel against Fate; but had not Herod the Great been rebel, too, till he mastered Fate and made himself King? She tore her purple girdle from her waist and waved it at the conquerors from the turret window.
The Roman trumpets faded in fainter echo. The marchers and counter marchers encircled the city in a ring of swords. Bernice from the Tower saw that the hired Macedonian mercenaries had been thrust forward first. She knew what that meant—these were the swordsmen of the world paid in plunder—there would be no mercy. Those not slain would be sold as slaves, the men for the mines, the women—for what? Was this the Kingdom for which she grasped? A silence fell for a moment on the terrific confused clamor within the city. A melancholy wail of woe came up from the central valley between Temple and Palace, and some madman’s maniacal scream resounded from the parapets to the Tower—“Woe—woe—woe is Jerusalem! How is that great Babylon drunk with the blood of the prophets fallen! Jerusalem shall fall this day! There shall not be left one stone upon another.”
“Were not those the very words of our Lord, when you admired the beauty of the Temple?” asked Mark. “Peter bade me to put that in his Gospel of our Lord’s life.”
“So every disciple has related to me, and so I have written in His Life, for the Greek churches of Asia,” answered the physician, Luke.
“And we thought he had come to set up earthly kingdom in this Temple,” said the venerable Matthew. “And now we know it is a Kingdom not made with hands for which all Time has prepared, and this earthly kingdom shall vanish quite away for a New Heaven, and a New Earth. This is the passing of the Old. These are the birth pangs to the New. Let us read what the scrolls of the prophets have said.”
And the three Apostles withdrew to a circular brass table in the middle of the Tower. On the brass table were carved the signs of the zodiac and the time of day pointed by an arrow as the outer sun swung round; but the Princess Bernice had no thought for what the scrolls of the prophets might say. An ancient urge was in her blood, old as those stars from which the astrologers had cast the horoscope of fate in the signs of the Zodiac. Again Roman power with its cohorts in silver and its legions with spears like fields of waving grain seemed a realer realm than a shadow kingdom not made with hands adown long future ages. How could she serve the Emperor to bind his gratitude to give her foothold on the ladder up to this earthly Imperial Throne? She had said she would wade through the blood of the living or trample the putrid dead; and she had done both.
A lull fell like the silence between the crash of two monster ocean billows. It was almost eventide, the end of the Jewish Sabbath, and the mountains were folding them in purple mantles like royal kings at rest, when the voices of the others in the room behind caught her ear. Luke, the Greek doctor, was speaking and pointing to the signs of the zodiac.
“You thought He spoke of time when He spoke of eternity. Here is the zodiac of Egypt and Chaldea. Here is their prophecy, when the star brought the Persian magi to the Bethlehem manger.”
Bethlehem? She hated the very name of Bethlehem. Had not her Aunt Herodias often told her the evil destiny of the Herods dated from the massacre of infants there? Then she remembered that the door from the hideous horrors of the Aqueduct had only opened when she called out in the name of the Love of God. What was this new thing coming in the war of worlds for power? But the pageantry of life blotted the answer to that question, and she heard as in an unreal dream the reading of the ancient scrolls.
“Here,” the doctor Luke was pointing to the zodiac, “here is the Scorpion, that Lucifer who fell from heaven from vaunting pride and set out to lead man astray to fill his kingdom. Here is Taurus the Bull, worshiped by Egypt and Chaldea which Abraham fled. Here are the Sun worshipers, when Israel burnt her sons upon the walls. Here is the Virgin, Mother of a Child in flesh to reveal God in form to man. Here is Pisces the Fisher, and when our Christians fled from Nero’s sword in Rome they used the Fisher sign to know one another. Christ said, ‘I make you fishers of men,’ and we knew not what he meant. The fall of Jerusalem is the fulfilment of our age. After our age, when the sword shall give place to sunburst comes the Age of Air and water and freedom with much going to and fro beyond the Isles of the Sea to nations not yet born.”
“Read from our own prophets and not from the astrologers of Chaldea and Egypt,” requested the aged Matthew. “Why have these evils fallen on the City of Zion?”
Mark, the youngest of the three, took up a cylinder of brass. From it he drew a parchment scroll written in Hebrew and rolled round a rod. “Here, Luke, you are a doctor of learning. You read the Hebrew. We Hebrews have not spoken our tongue since captive days in Babylon.”
Luke took the scroll and went to the window to see the clearer in the dimming light.
“Thus saith Jeremy,” he said, slowly translating in a patois of Aramaic and tradesman Greek. “Behold—our—reproach—our inheritance is turned to strangers—our house to aliens. We are orphans and fatherless. . . . Servants have ruled over us. . . . There is none that doth deliver out of their hand. . . . We get our bread by the peril of our lives because of the sword . . . our skin is black because of the famine . . . they ravish the women of Zion and the maids in the cities . . . princes are hanged by their hands . . . the Mountain of Zion is desolate. . . .”
“That of this Age,” broke in Matthew. “We shall see the fulfilment of that to-night; but what of the ages when the Time of the Sword has passed? Read Ezekiel, Brother Luke—what says he of the nations of the North beyond the Isles of the Sea? What says he of the Age of Freedom? What says he of the Age of the Air when the Sword has given place to Sunburst? What meant our Lord when He said greater miracles than He worked should the world see before the end of Time? What signs will foreshadow a New Heaven and a New Earth?”
Luke turned the spool of the scroll and ran his finger from right to left— “Is this the Age of Air?” he asked, then he read:
“A whirlwind came out of the North, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness . . . and out of the midst of the fire the color of amber . . . and this was the likeness . . . a man . . . every one had four wings . . . their feet were straight and sparkled like burnished brass . . . the hands of men were under the wings on the four sides . . . they had faces and wings . . . the wings were joined one to another and turned not when they traveled . . . they went straight forward with unmoving wings . . . the signs of the nation a lion, an ox, and an eagle . . . two wings they had joined each to other on each side . . . straight forward they went whither the spirit wished to go . . . with burning coals of fires and lamps in front . . . up and down in the air . . . up and down in the air . . . and their fire went forth as lightning . . . but upon the earth they used wheels . . . there were whirling rings in front . . . dreadful to see . . . but when the wings were lifted the wheels were lifted . . . and in the firmament their likeness was a terrible crystal . . . and the noise of the wings was the rush of many waters . . . when they stood, they let down their wings. . . .”
“What means that?” demanded Mark.
But the bent figure of the Apostle’s mother had risen with outstretched hands and in her eye was the light of ancient prophetess. It was as if she saw a Light with eyes of spirit, which eyes of flesh could not see—adown long, long Ages mid races of beings not yet guessed, nor born in thought. Her whole figure seemed aflame in vesture of unearthly shining Light. Mystic was she, prophetess, seeress, with eyes boring into the Far Future like stars piercing midnight dark. It was as if a flash of lightning suddenly tore through the impenetrable veil of Life concealed; as if an invisible Torch Bearer threw a flashlight on the Far Future. “When the Age of the Sword shall pass for the Sunburst of the Prince of Peace, there shall come dominion over the princes of the powers of the air,” she slowly uttered, as one in trance of vision. “Greater things than these shall ye do, and the Old Things are passing away for the New; and Jerusalem must needs be destroyed to give place. . . .”
A terrific crash drowned the words. The siege of the last wall had begun.
The Palace rocked and vibrated with blows of the battering rams. Huge stone blocks from the engines of war smashed down into the Eternal City between Palace and Temple; and a fearful cry of throngs crushed as they ran, rent the air. A great light flooded the darkening room of the Herod Tower.
All dashed to the turret window. A flame leaped with the roar of livid sea to very mid-heaven of the vaulted blue. The Temple was on fire. The Romans were inside the last wall. Fiery swords, bucklers, battle axes, javelins, arrows, flaming balls of naptha went tossing in mid-air as the Zealots on the roof plunged in the flames, or flung themselves to death in the burning moats from the walls. Jerusalem rained fire from the defenders on the parapet. The roar of the seething torrents drove all the city into the street and over the prostrate bodies rode the horsemen slashing with spear and sword, sparing neither women nor children, inflamed by the defiant insults to the proffered peace and insane with the demon lust for blood and plunder, held back these weary months. The Palace rocked again. Bernice leaned far out from the turret window. Just as the afterglow of the mystic sunset colored the heights of the Holy City, a mirage of chariots and troops struck the flaming clouds in shadow—the destruction of a shadow kingdom of sword and power. Armies, principalities and powers—seemed to be fighting in rolling billows of flame. The Princess hid her face in her hands on the window casement.
Jerusalem had fallen.
It was as if all the evils of all past ages in all past cycles of time crashed down in one vibrant shock that shook the world; as if the iron bands of law and order and empire forged in the furnaces of that Ancient of Days—had burst asunder; as though a great Tidal Wave from Eternity had submerged another Atlantis and thrown up in the wreckage on the Shores of Timeless Eternity another race, another age, another order. The terrible cry, that ascended to Heaven, was the cry of a Dying World.
The Kingdom of the Herod line for which she had risked her life and sacrificed her love was crumbling to dust and ashes under her eyes.
The Old had passed away for the New; and Fate had rejected her pawn.
Came the iron-shod trample of soldiers running up the stone stairs of the Herod Tower, and King Agrippa broke into the room followed by Titus, the emperor’s son, and Trajan, the youthful lieutenant, all faces blackened with the smoke of battle.
“You are safe here, my Sister,” cried the last ruler of the Herod line. “The fire cannot touch these Towers. All the city but these Herod Towers will be laid flat as plain by morning.”
“And where,” demanded Titus, “is the Princess page, who risked her life running through the Aqueduct this morning to do Rome service?” And Titus was not such a figure as her dreams of power had painted. He was a plain, short, thickset soldier, with keener eye for spear than woman’s guiles.
Then she stood erect and proud as Herod the Great had stood before the Roman Senate many long years ago. The daughter of high priest and King, she would meet Fate face to face.
“Small chance I had to do Rome service, my Lord,” she said. “Your brave legions captured the prize before I could add my woman help.”
“But when my soldiers guessed that the woman who had broken through the ranks in the morning to enter my tent was the page boy first to enter the hole in the wall to the Temple court, they swore they would take the city to-night, or perish to a man. Think you my Romans would be less men than a weak little Princess?” That word “weak” with its commiseration of male strength for child woman smote her hopes in the face like an iron gauntlet. She had played an ancient game with an ancient pawn—and lost, as Eve lost in an ancient garden; and she knew now what brought defeat to woman; and she knew now if she had answered the true urge of her heart, how she could have turned defeat to victory and wielded greater power with unseen hands than all Rome’s strength. Man could slay, but only woman could give life.
“You were the wine to my men’s flagging courage, my little Princess,” he said. “What reward do you claim?”
“My Lord,” she said, hiding her defeat in his chivalry, “when the chariots enter the Triumphal Arch at Rome, the last of the Herod line would not pace behind in captive chains. Let them perish rather. They would ride with the conqueror.”
The conqueror did not answer at once. He was turning over that request in his shrewd soldier mind. He smiled slowly as a man might smile at a child playing with a sharp sword which he had snatched from its hand.
“And it was for that you risked your life, child?” He laughed; and then his face saddened. He did not see the hidden appeal of the dark eyes gazing into his, though the young Trajan laughed brusquely and King Agrippa turned his reddening face away. “It is not mine to grant your request. Rome glories not in the blood of any race. My father did not covet the Imperial throne; nor do I. I covet only peace and rest. We have chosen seven hundred of the fairest Jews to grace the triumph; and they shall not walk in chains. They fought too well. They shall all ride in the chariots of the pageants; but my father, the Emperor, and I shall walk humbly on foot divested of all war harness and make thank offering to the gods of peace rather than victory. Such humble rôle would suit not you, my little Princess; but Rome never forgets even a will to service. I’ll appoint your brother and sister Drusilla a royal villa with dower by the sea at Naples; and there if the gods favor me, and my young officers do not carry you off, I shall see you sometimes, Princess.”
He strode quickly away.
The Princess and her brother Agrippa stood by the turret window.
Was it for this she had risked her life? She had reached Titus and grasped the prize, and found it turn in her hands to Apples of Sodom and the salt tears of the Dead Sea. She had thrown love to the discard and was being told to play the wanton with underlings, whom her Herod pride scorned. She, the daughter of high priests, back to Aaron, was to eat the crumbs from Rome’s table, like the lapdogs, pets to be fondled, abused, discarded—and then the grave! And for this, she had rejected the children of love in the garden called Paradise; the wine of life drawn from a lover’s lips; the laughing glad voice of many waters from the River of Life; the golden light that was love—her spirit fell as it had fallen in her delirious sleep; and she broke in a storm of weeping in the arms of her weak brother, no longer King.
Less than ten years saw Titus ascend that Imperial throne for which he cared nought; but the very year he ascended the throne came another flood of flame in fiery river down Vesuvius mountain burying the fair villas of Naples Bay, and beneath that flood of death, unknown and unfound, perished the last of the Herod line.