CHAPTER VI
MARSYAS ASSUMES A CHARGE
Agrippa crowded past the three that had preceded him into the black passage and, whispering a command to follow, led on. They kept track of him by the sound of his shoes on the stone, but the absolute darkness and the unfamiliar path made their steps uncertain and slow. Frequently the sure footfall before them receded and in fear of losing their guide they stumbled forward in nervous haste.
Presently the darkness about them lifted; the sensation was not that light had entered in, but that the darkness had simply failed in strength. There was a perceptible increase in temperature and the atmosphere, changing from a chill, became muggy and oppressive. Marsyas, drawing in a full breath in search of freshness, told himself that this was the original air of chaos, penned in at the hour of creation.
The floor under his feet became irregular, the instinctive realization that a roof was imminent overhead, passed, and, when the darkness became sufficiently feeble, they discovered that they were following through an immense chamber. Light came in through air-holes in the rock above.
Agrippa spoke aloud.
"This is a quarry-chamber. It was also my grandsire's secret stronghold, trial-chamber and tomb where many of his private grudges were satisfied. But there are no evidences, now. The place was open to the hill-jackals, by another passage which, if my memory has not failed me, shall lead us out."
One of the servitors, whose teeth had been chattering, made a shuddering sound. Agrippa laughed.
"Thou, Eutychus?" he said. "Comfort thee; the jackals have ceased to haunt the place since their hunger was last satisfied, thirty years ago."
An irregular spot of blackness in one of the walls swallowed up the prince as he spoke. Eutychus halted at the edge and drew back with a whimper. But the second servitor, who had not spoken since Marsyas had first seen him, muttered contemptuously some inarticulate word and pushed Eutychus into the blackness. Marsyas followed.
Thereafter it was only time which ensued. Sound, sight and, except for the stone under their feet, feeling were defeated. They moved interminably. Once or twice Eutychus became hysterical from the depression, but the stolid servitor smote him and bundled him on. Ahead a light laugh floated back to them in appreciation of the humor in Eutychus' predicament.
In time a yellow star with ragged points appeared ahead of them, high above the level upon which they had been walking. Eutychus trembled before it, but Agrippa quickened his steps.
"What a memory I have," he observed cheerfully. "Any other than myself would have been hopelessly entangled in these galleries and perished miserably some days hence."
The star enlarged, lost substantiality and presently Eutychus with a gasp of joy faltered that it was daylight. Several minutes later they emerged through an open tomb into high noon over Judea.
Before their blinded vision, the green hills swimming in sunlight upheaved between them and all points of the horizon. The City of David was nowhere to be seen; the sun stood directly in the zenith. Marsyas was lost; but the prince smiled in immense satisfaction and, seeking a grassy spot, sat down and breathed deeply. Presently he motioned to the others to sit. Marsyas came close to him; the others remained at a respectful distance.
For a long time no one spoke.
At last Agrippa fell to inspecting his delicate hands and his garments for marks of the long journey under the earth, and the embroidered shoes for evidences of contact with jagged rock. Satisfied that he was clean and intact, he laughed a little.
"By the hat of Hermes, this was noble apparel to wear through the bowels of the earth. Eheu! I was at my best, and not so much as a she-bat saw me!"
Eutychus, entirely recovered, chuckled, and a grin overspread the face of Silas; but Marsyas was plunged in his own reflections.
"This is the country-side west of Jerusalem," Agrippa resumed presently, for the young Essene's information. "Yonder," pointing north, "the road runs which shall lead us hence. We are an hour's journey by daylight above ground, from the Tower of Hippicus. But we are not beyond the zone of danger yet."
Marsyas did not answer. Reaction had set up within him against the foreign interest which had engaged his attention since sunrise. He had thought of himself and had been concerned for Agrippa; he had planned and had achieved ends. Entanglements straightened, immediate danger passed, the cloud of his sorrow embraced him wholly. He did not want to see that Canaan was beautiful, indeed a land of milk and honey. The wind laden with spring sweets struck a chill in his soul; the singing birds hurt him with a pain greater than he could endure. His heart was bruised, his every sensation sore and weighted with a numb consciousness that a dread thing had happened and that it was useless to pray and hope now. The presence of others was an obstacle, vaguely realized, that kept him from yielding to his desire to lie down on his face and hate everything and give himself up to whatever chose to befall him. Agrippa's hand, presently laid on his shoulder, irritated him. He had to restrain himself to keep from shaking it off. But the prince spoke, and his words were helpful.
"Marsyas, I know thy pain. I, too, had a beloved friend foully murdered, and the agony of helplessness against the power that did him to death sowed ashes on my heart. But the time of the Lord God, slow as it approaches, fell at last. The only bitterness in my cup of fierce triumph was that it was another, and not I, who accomplished, at the end, the undoing of the murderer."
"The Lord God forfend any such misfortune from me!" was the bitter rejoinder. "Vengeance can not be vengeance, if it fall from any hand but mine!"
"Thou speakest truly: be thy requital sweeter than mine!"
It was good to find the reflection of his own hurt in another's experience. It did not lessen his pain; but it gave him expression and the assurance of sympathy. Agrippa continued in his pleasant voice.
"This persecution will cease ere long. It is only Jonathan's device to make him noted as one zealous for the faith. He is much disliked. It is reproach enough for a High Priest to be popular with the Sadducees: it is well-nigh unforgivable to be set up by Rome; it is an insurmountable obstacle to be other than eligible, Levitically; but this man hath been wholly undone by these and an offensive personality. Wherefore the people hate him with a fervor which Vitellius must respect. But Jonathan fancies that if he can make him a name as a defender of the faith, the rabble will applaud, and thou and I and Vitellius and the discerning Jews will achieve no more against him than flies whining about a wall! What folly! How oft we believe a thing to be so, because we wish it to be so! Vitellius does not see how the stoning of blasphemers indorses a man whom he dislikes. So Jonathan's time is short and the persecution will cease with him. His minion will be discountenanced with the master, and thine opportunity is made. Be of hope; thy day is not distant."
But Marsyas' brow blackened.
"A noble reflection!" he exclaimed passionately, "and one that should soothe the Tarsian's dreams! Binding and stoning and killing in his zeal for an usurper of the robes of Aaron! Shedding sweet blood—doing irreparable deeds to serve a vain end, to further a useless attempt—a thing to be given over to-morrow! O thou God of wrath! If it be not sin to pray it, let him stumble speedily in the Law!"
Meanwhile Agrippa observed the sun, and after a little silence that his return to spirits seem not to grate upon the young Essene's distress, arose briskly.
"Up! up!" he said. "It is not at variance with Vitellius' extreme methods to empty the whole Prætorium into the hills in search of us. Up, fellows! To Ptolemais!"
Marsyas arose with the others, but he hesitated and glanced down at the fine garments that covered him. He remembered that he had not brought his soiled Essenic robes with him. He unslung his wallet and extended it to Agrippa.
"Take it, and forget not that I shall ask payment from the strength of that high place to which this may help thee! The vengeful spirit is not of choice a patient thing! I shall wait—but to achieve mine ends. God prosper thee! If thy servants will lend me each a garment thou shalt have back thy dress once more and I will depart."
"Whither?" asked Agrippa without taking the purse.
"To En-Gadi, for the present."
"But the brotherhood will then be guilty of befriending thee and thou art a living example of that which befalls him who befriends one of Saul's marked creatures."
"So I am become as a pestilence," Marsyas said grimly. It was another count against the Pharisee.
"Thou art much beset. Doubt not that Vitellius will seek for thee in En-Gadi, and it were better for thee and for the brotherhood that thou be not found. Thou must leave Judea, for the arm of the Sanhedrim is long."
To leave Judea meant to be banished among the Gentiles, to step out of four whitewashed walls into unknown turmoil; to leave the pleasures of solitude, the peoples of parchment, the events of old history, the ambitions of the soul and go forth amid arrogant heathen godlessness to meet precarious fortunes. The whole course of his life had been entirely reversed in a few hours. Resolute and strong as the Essene was, his face contracted painfully.
Agrippa laid a hand on his arm.
"Remember, it is our faith that this persecution will cease and then thou canst return to thy study in safety," he said as gently as if he were speaking to a child. But in that moment, Marsyas told himself that there would be no returning to his old peace.
"Come with me," Agrippa continued. "I will afford thee protection and thou shalt provide me with funds."
He paused and, taking Marsyas' arm, led him down to a little meandering vale, sweet with blossoming herbs.
"Look," he said, pointing back toward the east.
The hills stood aside in a long, full-breasted series, and revealed through a narrow, green-walled aisle a distant view of Jerusalem, white and majestic on her heights. The morning blue that encroaches upon the noon in early spring softened the spectacle with a tender atmosphere; distance glorified its splendors, and the light upon it was other than daylight—it was a nimbus, the ineffable crown.
Thus seen it was no longer the city of subjection, filled with wrongs and griefs and hopelessness. It was the Holy City, upright with the godliness of David, lawful in the government of Solomon; sacred with the presence of the Shekinah in the Holy of Holies. Here, Sheba might have stood first to be shown the glories of Solomon; here, Alexander might have drawn up his Macedonian quadriga to behold what excellence he was next to conquer. Marsyas felt emotion seize him, the mighty welling of tears in their springs.
"Behold it!" Agrippa said. "We go forth beaten and ashamed, but thou shalt return to it justified; I shall return to it crowned. Believe in that as thou believest in Jehovah!"
He drew the young Essene away and signed to the servitors.
In the days that followed, Agrippa tactfully and little by little won Marsyas out of his brooding. Delicately, he sounded the young man's nature and discovered the channel into which his sorrowful thoughts could be diverted. Stirring incidents of the Herod's own astounding history, graphic accounts of great pageants, of contests of famous athletæ, or of gorgeous cities, vivaciously told, engaged Marsyas' attention in spite of himself. Gradually his sharpened interest began to choose for itself. Expectancy of things to come communicated by Agrippa presently possessed Marsyas.
All this was a new and inviting experience for the young Essene, as well as an alleviation. He had lived a placid, passionless life with the old Essenic master and centered his broad loves on one or two. Evil happenings had wrenched these from him and his affections wandered and wavered, lost only for an hour. By the time the journey to Ptolemais was ended, Agrippa had stepped into his own place in the heart of the bereaved young man.
Ptolemais was built for solidity and strength. Its houses were defenses, its public buildings were fortifications; its mole, harbor front and wall the most unassailable on the Asiatic seaboard. From the plains of Esdraelon in their dip toward the sea, the city was seen, set broadside to the waves, stanch, regular, square and bulky—embodied defiance for ever uttered to whatever sea-faring nation turned its triremes into her roadsteads.
In a narrow street near the southernmost limits of the city, Agrippa stopped. A house of a single story stood before them, its roof barely higher than its door; a heavy wall before it, a narrow gate in that.
"Enter," said the prince to Marsyas, "into the unctuous hospitalities of Agrippa's palace."
He unlatched the gate, and, leading his companion across a small court, knocked at the door, which after a little wait swung open.
An uncommonly pretty waiting-woman stepped aside to let them enter. Marsyas put off his sandals and followed the prince into a small recess cut off by curtains from the interior of the house. A bronze lamp was in a niche in the wall and a taboret stood in the corner. No other furniture was visible.
The prince dismissed the two servitors and they passed behind the curtains, Eutychus stumbling as he went, because his eyes were engaged in attempting to attract the attention of the pretty waiting-woman, who seemed quite oblivious of his glances.
"Send hither your mistress, Drumah," Agrippa said to her. She bowed and departed and presently one of the curtains lifted and a woman hastened into the apartment.
With a low cry of joy she ran to the prince and flung herself on his breast.
"Oh, that thou shouldst come and none to watch for thee!" she exclaimed. "That thou shouldst enter thy house and none but thy hireling to meet thee!"
He laughed lightly and kissed her.
"I have brought also a guest, Cypros," he said. For the first time her eyes lighted on Marsyas and blushing she drew away from her husband.
"I pray thy pardon," she murmured.
The light from the day without shone full on her through a lattice, and since his journey to Nazareth Marsyas had learned to look on women with an interested eye.
She was small, but her figure showed the perfect outlines of the matron, and the Jewish dress, bound about the hips with a broad scarf, let no single grace lose itself under drapery. But it was the face that held the young Essene's attention. There, too, was the blood of the Herod, for Agrippa had married his cousin, but its attributes were refined almost to ethereal extremes. Flesh could not have been whiter nor coloring more delicate. The effect rendered was an impression of exquisite frailty, produced as much by the pathos in the over-large black eyes and the serious cut of the tender mouth as by the transparency of the exceedingly small hand which lay on her breast as if to still a fluttering heart. Her beauty was not aided by strength of character or intellectuality; it was distinctly the simple, defenseless, appealing type which is an invincible conqueror of men.
"This is Marsyas of Nazareth, an Essene in distress, yet not so unfortunate that he is not willing to help us. What comfort canst thou offer him from thy housekeeping?"
The Essenes were the holy men of Israel; the large eyes filled with deference and she bowed.
"Welcome in God's name. My lord has bread and a roof-tree. I pray thee share them freely with us."
Marsyas' formality so serviceable among the women of Nazareth suddenly seemed infelicitous here, but it was all he had for response to this different personage.
"The blessing of God be with thee; I give thee thanks."
She summoned the pretty waiting-woman.
"Let my lord and his guest be given food and drink; set wine and such meats as we have, and let the children come and greet their father."
The prince thrust the curtains aside and, motioning to Marsyas', waited until his princess and the young man had passed within.
The apartment was a second recess larger than the first, shut in by hangings of sackcloth and furnished with rough seats and tables of unoiled cedar. It was a cheerless room, fit for the humblest man in Ptolemais, but the unconquered Herod and his lovely princess ennobled it.
There was a scarf of damask thrown over one of the tables and two or three pieces of magnificent plate sat upon it.
"That," said Agrippa, pointing to the silver, "hath been my moneyer for years. I have lived a month on a flagon."
Cypros sighed, but three pretty children, a boy and two girls, rushed in from the rear of the house and engaged the prince's attention.
Meanwhile, the attractive servant entered with plates for the table and Eutychus followed with a platter of food. As she passed the young Essene she tripped on an unevenness in the floor and would have fallen, but Marsyas, with a quick movement, more instinctive than gallant, threw out a hand and stayed her.
She thanked him composedly and went about her work, but Marsyas, chancing to raise his eyes to Eutychus' face, caught a look from the servitor that was livid with hate. Shocked and astonished, Marsyas turned his back and wondered how he had crossed the creature.
Agrippa sat at the table, and, with Cypros at his left, bade Marsyas sit beside him. The children were carried protesting away.
The prince filled a goblet of silver with a pale wine, slightly effervescent and exhaling a bouquet peculiarly subtle and penetrating. He raised the frosty cup between his fingers—drink, drinker and cup of a type—and looked at the strip of sky visible through the lattice.
"This to the gods," he said, "or whatever power hath fortune to give, and a heart to be won of libation. I yield you my soul for a laurel!"
The princess leaned her forehead against his arm and whispered:
"It is wicked—forbidden!"
"I poured but one glass: I make the prayer; I have not asked thee or our young friend to pray it with me. But my devices are exhausted. I make appeal now, haphazard, for I grope!"
"And didst thou fail in Jerusalem?"
"As I have failed from Rome to Idumea."
She drew in a little sobbing breath and hid her eyes against his sleeve. Marsyas sat silent. This first evidence of despair on the prince's part was most unwelcome. His own fortunes were too much entangled with Agrippa's for him to contemplate their fall. He felt the prince's eyes upon him. The silver cup had been refilled and was extended to him.
Marsyas took it.
"This to success," he said, "not fortune!"
Cypros stirred. "Success is so deliberate!" she sighed.
Marsyas made no answer; would it be long before he should have his bitter wish?
"Thou seest Judea," Agrippa began, "thou heardest me aspire to it and thou didst abet me in mine ambition. But learn, for thy own comfort, Marsyas, the vagabond to whom thou hast attached thyself doth not grasp after another man's portion. Judea is mine! And Rome must yield me mine inheritance!" The prince's eyes glowed with youth's ambition.
Marsyas listened intently.
"A Herod's word is in disrepute," the prince continued. "Hence I am limited to action to prove myself. But look thou here, Marsyas. Judea is pillaged: so am I. Judea is despised: so am I! Judea weltereth in her own blood: am I not sprung from a murdered sire, who was son of a murdered mother—each dead by the same hand of father and husband? Dear Lord, I am an offspring of the shambles, mother-marked with wounds!"
He shuddered and drew his hand across his forehead.
"Having thus suffered the same miseries which are Judea's, is it not natural that I should relieve her when I, myself, am relieved? I should rule Judea as Judea would rule herself—"
He broke off with a gesture of impatience.
"How I hate the blatant vower of vows! Help me to mine opportunity, Marsyas."
As between Rome and Herod the Great as sovereign, there was no choice. Though the Asmonean Slave, as the Jewish patriots named the capable fiend, gave Judea the most brilliant reign since the glories of Solomon and the most monstrous since Ahab, the nominal independence offered by his administration was absolutely submerged and lost in the terror of his absolutism and the devilish genius in him for oppression.
Herod and Abaddon were names synonymous in Judea, and the mildness of his sons or their inefficiency had not been able to set the reproach aside. No able Herod had arisen since the founder of the house, except, as Marsyas hopefully believed, this man before him. Herod Agrippa was the son of Aristobolus, who was murdered in his youth before his capabilities developed. The Herods, Philip and Antipas, had been mild because they were incapable. The recurrence of mental strength in the blood was an untried contingency. All this came to Marsyas, now, suggested by the implied self-defense in the prince's words, and for a moment he wavered between concern for his people and anxiety for his own cause. Agrippa and Cypros watched him.
"Thou art a just youth," the prince went on in the winning voice that had already made its conquest over the Essene. "I can not prove myself until I am given trial, and judgment without trial is an abomination even unto the tyrant Rome!"
"I have not judged, lord," Marsyas protested.
"And thou wilt not until I have shown myself unworthy of thy confidence. Thou hast even now bespoken God's favor for me—be then, His instrument! Thou art the first ray of light in a decade of darkness that has enveloped me and mine!"
Marsyas put out his hand to the prince. The peril in the Herod blood, in his calculations, had dropped out of sight.
"What dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said. "How is it that thou beseechest me—me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends? But hear me! Thou aspirest to that place of which I have no knowledge, among peoples whose paths I never cross, into the calling of the great! Yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, I am thy substance. Use me! Thou knowest my price."
Agrippa smiled.
"Though I die owing even mine embalmer, I shall pay thee that debt. I have said. And now to the process. What money hast thou?"
Agrippa was silent and Marsyas, watching his face, waited.
"I need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand."
Marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence.
"I will get it for thee," he said.