Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians. Elizabeth Miller
he had not expected to be accused of apostasy. But the old mood asserted itself.
"This for thy slander of Stephen in the college," he said with premonitory calm when the Levite approached him, and struck with terrific force. The Levite's body shot backward and dropped heavily on the earth. The rest of the lictors precipitated themselves upon the young man, and, in desperation and in fury, the one man and the numbers fought.
Meanwhile the man in scarlet thought fast. His Roman love of defiance and war had roused in him a most compelling respect for the young Essene, but cupidity put forth swift and convincing argument even beyond the indorsement of admiration. If the Shoterim took the young man in ward, he would be executed and the treasure come into the hands of the state for disposition. In view of the fact that Herrenius Capito had traced the bankrupt to Jerusalem, Jerusalem was no longer tenantable for the bankrupt. He had to have money to escape to Alexandria and the Essene was too profitable a chance to be lost to the murdering hands of fanatics.
Excited and bent only on preventing the arrest, the man sprang into the crowd and forced his way to the Essene's side. But the next instant he also was sent reeling by a blow delivered by Marsyas in his blind resolution not to be taken without difficulty. Before the bankrupt could recover, the united force of spectators and lictors flung itself upon Marsyas.
Steadying himself, the man in scarlet urged his bruised brain to think. Half of his life for a ruse! for nothing but a ruse could save the young man, now.
Then, with a half-suppressed cry of eagerness, the bankrupt took to his heels and ran toward the city as only an Arab trained in Roman gymnasia could run.
The sentry at the gate passed him and he entered on the marble pavements of the streets for the finest exhibition of speed he had shown since he had carried off the laurel in Rome. He knew the city as a hare knows its runways. He cut through private passages, circled watchful constabulary, eluded congestions, and took the quick slopes of Jerusalem's hills as though the deep lungs of a youth supplied him.
When the broad, marble-paved street, which let in some glimpse of the starry sky upon the passer, opened between the rich residences of the Sadducees, the white luster of many burning torches lighted an area on a distant slope at its head. The running man sped on, taking the rise of Mount Zion without slackening, until he rushed upon a sentry obscured under the brooding shadow of a heavy wall.
"Halt!" The challenge of the sentry brought him up.
"Without the password, comrade," he panted. "Call the officer of the guard. And by our common quarrels in Rome do thou haste, for if I see not Vitellius and Herrenius Capito this instant I expire!"
The cry of the sentry passed from post to post until the centurion of the guard emerged from a small gate.
"One cometh without the countersign," the sentry said.
"A visitor for Vitellius and Herrenius Capito," the bankrupt explained.
"The general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply.
"Hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, Aulus," the bankrupt laughed. "Take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword if I am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!"
The gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious Aulus, let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in, revealing an interior of semi-dusk.
The centurion conducted his visitor within. Torches stuck in sconces high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement, terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night.
After a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in salute to the bankrupt. The other responded with a skill and grace that could not have been assumed for the moment. The dexterity of the camp was written in the movement.
"I am expected of Capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a very limited sense.
"I know, and do thou follow. Thou shalt see him. Were he dead and inurned he would arise to thee."
The man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with sentinels, to a porch that even the Royal Colonnade of the Temple could not shame. A huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant compound arch of the portal. An orderly, a veritable pygmy within the outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted.
"A visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said, passing the man in scarlet to the orderly.
He was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the vestibule of Herod the Great's palace.
It was a lofty hall, nobly vaulted, lined with costly Indian onyx and florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes. Yet, though its jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and its carpets gone, its bloody genius held despotic sway from a shadowy throne, over the note of brute force which the Roman garrison had infused into it.
At the far end was a small carven table at which two Romans sat, a lamp and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesseræ of a dice-game between them.
Without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped forward.
"Greeting, Vitellius. Capito, I salute you," he said. His voice was that of a composed man speaking with equals.
Vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; Capito drew up his lids and his lower jaw relaxed. Slowly then both men got upon their feet.
"By the bats of Hades—" Vitellius began.
"By the nymphs of Delphi!" Capito's aged falsetto broke in. "It is the Herod himself!"
"Herod Agrippa!" Vitellius exclaimed.
"From the faces of you," Agrippa declared, "I might have been the shade of my grandsire. But I have been hunting you. I need help. And as thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar from my purse, do thou aid me in urging Vitellius to yield it, Capito."
"Help," Capito repeated.
"What manner of help?" Vitellius demanded, fixing Agrippa with a suspicious eye.
"Arrest me an Essene from the hands of Jonathan."
"Jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly.
"The High Priest, the Nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the Agrippa explained with amiable provoke. "He has arrested an Essene on a trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the Essenic brotherhood for a loan to repay Cæsar. I left him in the hands of the Shoterim, in Bezetha. If he be not speedily rescued, they will stone him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to Cæsar—" he drew up his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly Jewish.
Capito frowned and Vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at Agrippa.
"It is one to me," Agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of dissent in the contemplation. "I am just as happy and as like to escape Cæsar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be, Capito, if thou failest to collect it."
Capito nervously fingered the tesseræ at his hand.
"Meanwhile," added the Herod, perching himself on the edge of the table, "the youth proceeds to Jonathan's stronghold."
Vitellius looked at Cæsar's debt-collector. "Dost thou see anything more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked.
Capito scratched his white head. He had learned to look for ulterior motives in every move of this slippery Herod, but he was too little informed in the matter to see more than the surface.
"We—can look into it, first," he opined.
"Jonathan will not await your pleasure," Agrippa put in. "He is hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to save himself popular favor. The Sanhedrim