CHAPTER XXXIV
CAPTIVES OF THE MIGHTY
The second night after the riot about the Synagogue, one of Flaccus' sentries, posted about the small cramped portion of the Regio Judæorum, into which the forty thousand Jews had been driven, brought his spear at guard and called "Halt!"
But the object approaching spun on toward him noiselessly, passed the lines, and disappeared up the dark, sandy roadway, into the night on the beleaguered quarter.
"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" roared the next post, who had heard his challenge, "challenging sand-columns, Sergius? Flaccus should know of thy thoroughness!"
The discomfited sentry muttered and shouldered his weapon.
But the column of sand disintegrated before a hovel, and became a snaky woman-shape that disappeared into the dark door of the house.
Within, she stumbled over prostrate bodies, sleeping on the earthen floor, and, muttering in Hindu against the darkness, stopped finally.
"Master!" she called softly, in her native tongue.
There was instant reply.
"Thou, Vasti! The Lord God be praised! What news?"
The woman felt her way to the voice, and, encountering the alabarch's outstretched hands, began at once, in a whisper:
"I have come, but not to abide," she said. "The Nazarenes took Lydia, and fled with her unto Judea!"
"Unto Judea! Away from me?" the alabarch said piteously.
"Nay, but Egypt hath risen against her. The Roman hath put forth all his soldiery to look for her. If she remained in Alexandria she would surely die!"
The alabarch moaned. The last of his fortitude had gone with Lydia, and helpless, disgraced and old, he was beginning to surrender. The bayadere put her hands on him.
"Be of hope," she insisted, "for the white brother departed at sunset to seek for her, and to get protection from the Herod!"
"Judea!" the alabarch repeated miserably. "There she entereth into equal danger, for there it is death to be a Nazarene!"
"But the white brother is sworn to kill the leader of the persecution," she said grimly. "Speed him with thy prayers, for he is weighted with no little mission. I come unto thee with cheer. Listen, and be of hope! The city of the Jews, here, is all but destroyed, but I buried thy moneys, thy drafts, thy money-papers and thy jewels. Though they burn thy house, thou art still rich!"
"Buried them?" he repeated.
"In the earth of thy court-yard, ere the Herod departed, for the flame on the altar of Mahadeva burned crimson and murky! And I took certain of thy moneys and gave them to certain of the Nazarenes and bade them be prepared to care for her, who had cared for them! They went unto the Synagogue! They rescued her from the stone, after the sending of Vishnu upon the rabble! They went unto Judea with her—and I, Vasti, I did it, as Khosru, the Mahatma, bade!"
"Be thou blessed, Vasti; blessed be the day that I held up the hand that would have fallen on thee, in the markets of Sind! But—but—Marsyas—what manner of vessel carryeth him? How long! Alas, how wide the sea!"
"But the vengeance of the Divine hand is loosed! Sawest thou the destruction of the host, before thy people's Temple? The bay was black with them this morning and the vultures come even from Libya. Knowest thou the evil mouth that spread sayings against Lydia? I was in the city and beheld it! It was the charioteer, Eutychus! Him I kept in my sight, while I ran at the forefront of the riot with the white brother, and when we stood upon the rock, I saw him! This morning, I sought for him before the Synagogue, and I found him!"
She brought her teeth together with a click.
"I burned incense for the purification of the fire, straightway," she said sententiously.
"Canst thou endure?" she asked after a silence.
"All—so that Lydia be saved!"
"Thy spirit may be tried," she said. "The Roman hath commanded that ye be pent here until Lydia is found, believing that imprisonment and hunger and torture may persuade the Jews to give her up if she be hid among them. But I shall come to thee with comforts and such tidings as I may learn."
She touched his hands to her forehead and moved away, calling back:
"The time is not long; the Jewish king will not lag in his own requital! Be assured! I abide without these lines, since I can not help thee within! Farewell!"
At the door she stopped, but, reconsidering her impulse, went out without speaking.
"It would not be seemly to tell, now, that I saw Classicus' green and gold garment exposed in a usurer's shop."
A sand-column passed before the wind, by the sentry at the upper end of the street; but he did not attempt to halt it.