CHAPTER III
THE 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.
