CHAPTER IV
THE BANKRUPT
Somewhat subdued, the man in scarlet walked through the night in the City of David. After his first sensations he was discomfited.
"Now this is what comes of the irregular barbarity in Judean executions," he ruminated. "In Rome this Nazarene would have been despatched in order and his body borne away to the puticuli and no opportunity given for that painful scene outside. Doubtless I should have convinced the young man and borrowed his gold of him, by this time. Certainly, Fortune is a haughty jade when once offended. But I shall be fortunate again; by all the gods, Jewish or Gentile, I will compel her smiles!
"It would be my luck never to see him again; he will probably linger only to see this dead man buried, and go on to En-Gadi, as he said he would. It would hardly be seemly to approach him about his gold, in his unhappiness, or I would waylay him, yet. A pest on the zealots! Why did they not hold off this stoning for a day?"
Moodily occupied by his thoughts, he passed unconscious of the careless people about him. The huge tower of Antonia set on the brink of Mount Moriah frowned blackly over the street and in its shadow the idle life of the night laughed and reveled and sauntered. The woman of the city was there, the Roman soldier in armor, the alien that bowed to Brahm or Bel, the son of the slow Nile, of the Orontes and of the yellow Tiber. It was not the resort of the lowest classes, but of those that were at variance with the spirit of the city, or the times and their philosophies. Light streamed from open doorways, the wail of lyres and the jingle of castanets resounded within and without. Now and then belated carters, driving slow donkeys, would plod through the revelry—a note of relentless duty which would not be forgotten. Again, humbler folk would retreat into wagon-ways or hug the walls to permit the passage of a Sadducee and his retinue, or a decurion and his squad—rank and power asserting their inexorable prerogative.
Presently there approached the click of hoofs upon flagging. A soldier, passing through a broad shaft of light from a booth, stopped short, drew himself up and swung his short sword at present. Up the street, from lip to lip of every arms-bearing man, ran his abrupt call to attention.
A body of legionaries appeared suddenly in the ray of light—brassy shapes in burnished armor, picked for stature and bearing. Not even the plunge into blackness again broke the precision and confidence of that tread before which the world had fled as did now the mule-riders and the pedestrians of Jerusalem.
After them, the beam of light projected two horsemen into sudden view. There was the rattle and ring of saluting soldiers by the way. The radiance showed up a typical Roman in the armor of a general, but in deference to Israelitish prejudice against images, the eagle was removed from his helmet, the bosses of Titan heads from breastplate and harness. This was Vitellius, Proconsul of Syria and the shrewdest general on Cæsar's list. By his side rode Herrenius Capito, Cæsar's debt-collector, a thin-faced Roman in civilian dress, and with the ashes of age sprinkled on his hair.
The man in scarlet took one glance at the gray old countenance frowning under the sudden light of the lamp and slid into the obscurity of an open alley at hand. He did not emerge till the hoof-beats had died away.
"So thou comest in search of me, sweet Capito," he muttered, "and I am penniless. But it is comforting to know that thou hast no more hope of getting the three hundred thousand drachmæ which I owe to Cæsar, than I have of paying it!"
After a little silence, he said further to himself, with added regret:
"Now, had I that young Essene's gold, Capito would not find me in Jerusalem! O Alexandria! I must reach thee, though I turn dolphin and swim!"
He continued on his way to the north wall, where he found exit presently into Bezetha, the unwalled suburb of Jerusalem. Here the houses were comparatively new, less historic, less pretentious than those in the old city. Here were inns in plenty, relaxed order and a general absence of the racial characteristics and the influence of religion. The middle classes of Jerusalem dwelt here.
It was dark, poorly paved, and the man in scarlet laid his hand on his purse under his tunic and walked with circumspection toward a khan. It was no surprise to him to hear the sounds of struggle and outcry. He stopped to catch the direction of the conflict that he might avoid it. It came out of a street so narrow, in a district so squalid, that happiness seemed to have fled the spot. If ever the wealthy entered the place, it was to seek out human beings hungry enough to sell themselves as slaves.
The commotion centered before a hovel, a tragedy in sounds, ghastly because the night made it unembodied. The man in scarlet located it as out of his path and would have continued but for the insistent screams of a woman in the struggle. Harsh shouts attempted to cry her down, but desperation lent her strength and the suburb shuddered with her mad cries.
The man in scarlet lagged, shook his shoulders as if to throw off the influence of the appeal and finally stopped. At that moment several torches of pitch, lighted at once, threw a smoky light over the scene. The passage was obstructed by a group of men uniformly dressed, and several spectators attracted by the commotion. Assured that this was arrest and not violence, the curiosity of the man in scarlet drew him that way. At a nearer view, he saw that the aggressors were Shoterim or Temple lictors, under command of a Pharisee wearing the habiliments of a rabbi. The man in scarlet identified him as the referee in the center of the ring about the stoning. The sudden lighting of the torches convinced him that the attack had its inception in secret.
In the center of the fight was a middle-aged woman clinging desperately about the bodies of a young man and a young woman. It was the efforts of the Shoterim to tear her away and her resistance that had made the arrest violent.
Shouts and revilings told the man in scarlet the meaning of the disturbance. The ferrets of the High Priest, Jonathan, had discovered a house of Nazarenes and were taking them.
"More ill-timed zeal!" he muttered to himself. "Or let me be exact: more bloody politics!"
He had turned to leave when a figure in white, directed from the city, drove past him and through to the center of the crowd, with the irresistible force of a hurled stone. Spectators fell to the right and left before it and the man in scarlet drawing in a breath of amazement turned to see what the light had to disclose.
It was the young Essene, hardly recognizable for the distortion of deadly hate and passion on his face. There were dark stains on his garments and dust on his black hair. Every drop of blood had left his cheeks, but his eyes blazed with a light that was not good to see.
He went straight at the Pharisee. His grasp fell upon Saul's shoulder, drove in and seized upon its sinews. The startled Tarsian turned and the young Essene with bent head gazed grimly down at him. An interested silence fell over both captor and captive. The blaze in the young man's eyes reddened and flickered.
"I have been seeking thee, Saul of Tarsus," he said in a voice of deadly silkiness. "Thou hast been most zealous for the Law in Stephen's case. Look to it that thou fail not in the Law, for I shall profit by thy precept! And even as Stephen fell, so shalt thou fall; even as Stephen came unto death, so shalt thou come! Mark me, and remember!"
The words were menace made audible; it was more than a threat: it was prophecy and doom.
A tingle of admiration ran over the man in scarlet. He who could leave the bier of a murdered friend to visit vengeance on the head of the murderer was no weakling.
"A Roman, by the gods!" he exclaimed to himself. "A noble adversary! a man, by Bacchus!"
A threatening murmur arose from the spectators. But there was no responsive fury kindled in Saul's eyes. Instead he looked at Marsyas with unutterable sorrow on his face. Presently his shoulders lifted with a sigh.
"The city festereth with Nazarenes as a wound with thorns," he said to himself; aloud he called, "Joel."
The Levite materialized out of obscurity and bowed jerkily.
"Bear witness to this young man's behavior. Lictors, take him. We shall hold him for examination as a Nazarene and an apostate."
Marsyas started and his hand dropped. Plainly, 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 may sit to-morrow, the prisoner come for trial and be executed—even more expeditiously because the Nasi expects thee to interfere, Vitellius."
The proconsul bit through an expletive. Jonathan was a thorn in his side.
"What is it you wish me to do?" he demanded.
"Arrest me this youth. The claim of the proconsul's charge will take precedence over the hieratic."
"But he has not offended—"
"Save the protest; he has; he struck me, a Roman citizen. But draw up the warrant, good Vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man. Thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save Capito the favor of his emperor."
Vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for Marsyas' arrest was written, despatched an orderly for an officer. One of the contubernalis to Vitellius, or one of the sons of a noble family serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared.
"Take four," Vitellius said grimly, in compliance with Herod's demand, when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man. Arrest by superior claim the High Priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out. Fetch him and this man back to me!"
The young centurion saluted and Agrippa assented with a nod.
"Thanks," he added nonchalantly. "Come, brother," he said to the young officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of Rome to undo the work of Jonathan."
Agrippa and the Roman legionaries passed out of the Prætorium and turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of Jonathan, which stood a little above the camp.
The Herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of Marsyas and the friends of the Nazarenes to retard the movement. After a quick walk of a short distance, the Roman group came upon the Temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street.
Saul and Joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of half a hundred vagrants. The flaring torch-light shone down on bowed heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles and knives.
Among them, unbroken and silent, was Marsyas, heavily shackled. He was marked with blows, but several besides the Levite Joel staggered as they walked, and Agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval.
The officer nodded abruptly and broke through the crowd. The light dropping on his shining armor instantly displayed his authority to halt the group. His command to stop elicited almost precipitate obedience. The hooting vagrants scattered.
The centurion laid his hand on Marsyas' shoulder.
"Thou art a prisoner of the proconsul," he said.
The halt and the dismayed silence caught Saul's attention. He turned back and pushed his way into the center of the circle.
"Unhand him," he said to the centurion. "He is wanted of the Sanhedrim."
The young officer smiled derisively and thrust off the hold of the apprehensive lictors. The four made way through the crowd and the officer passed Marsyas into their hands.
"Make my excuses to the Sanhedrim," the officer said sarcastically. The Pharisee glanced over the Roman's party. Then he stepped without ostentation in the centurion's way—a weak, small figure in fringes and phylactery, living up to his nature as he fronted brassy Rome.
"Show me thy warrant," he said quietly.
The centurion drew forth the parchment and flourished it. Saul took it with a murmured courtesy, and, holding it near a torch, read it carefully. Then he passed it back.
"After the proconsul hath done with this young man," he observed, "the Sanhedrim will claim him. Say this much to the proconsul. We shall wait. Peace!"
He motioned his party to proceed and the crowd moved on, leaving Marsyas in the hands of new captors.
"Back to the Prætorium," the centurion said to Agrippa.