“I know not, Apollos, unless one Thecla, a convert of Paul’s twenty years ago in Iconium, when I was youth and captured by these same bandits. She was said to have escaped to the caves near Antioch, where she set up schools for the maids, who run away from the Love Temples of Daphne Gardens. She toils so secretly few know how or where she dwells, except that a great Roman lady left her fortune enough to buy protection of Rome—”
“There is vile work afoot to-night, Onesimus. We must call the Roman guard and hasten up to protect her caves till they come. Do you instruct our tent men, while I see the Roman captain.”
Up and up over circling trail they rode the rough mountain pass that led between the sea and Antioch. Larch, oak, fir and pine forest closed behind them darkening as they pushed their panting horses up the steep ascent. Mountain torrents rushed down to right and left in the sibilant hush of night slacking the thaw of upper snows. Narrower and narrower led the pass till the riders could have tossed a biscuit from side to side of the precipices closing in cañon cleft. Above tree line, the clouds enfolded them in a silken gauze cool as wind on hot face; and above the cloud line, they rode in a world of silver moonlight, with black shadows of the rock walls etched in ink and the howl of hyena and jackal reëchoing through the caves. The stars were lanterns hung in a lucent blue that seemed but a hand reach away from the two silent riders. Once, as they passed the dark mouth of a grotto in the rock wall washed by the tumbling cascade of waters over the precipice, they heard the roar of a lion that set all the mountains in echo. The precipices on either side of the pass now came together in overhanging arch not a lance length apart and, as they passed under the shadow, a mountain cataract leaped down—rainbow colored in the mist of moonlight, but the path seemed to be ending in a blind wall.
“She chose her hiding place well,” said Apollos.
“She would need to,” answered Onesimus.
“Where is her religious house?” asked the aged man, as they breathed their horses.
Onesimus was no longer presbyter and prospective bishop. He was mountain boy again as he had been twenty years ago before the bandits had captured him, and his eyes were searching the face of the rock cleft where only a silver bar showed open space, as an eagle might scout for its hidden nest. An eagle did at that very moment utter shrill warning of human intrusion.
“That,” answered Onesimus, “must be her sentry of danger; for she was mountain born as I am; and we always chose camp near an eagle’s nest for warning.”
The eagle uttered its woeful cry again to fore, and they passed through the arch. The rock walls here were pitted with grottos as they are to this day; and we, who smile at the early Christians adopting monastic life to flee the world, the flesh and the devil in these early ages, should remember that it was often life in the grottos, or death by wild beasts in the hippodrome. In one place the silvered mossed rock seemed to have been stoned up in front. Past this place, tumbled another cataract. Dwellers in the grottos always chose sites with good drinking water inside. Onesimus pointed ahead, drew his sword and moved forward. To the side where the cataract gushed out was a door of long slabs so narrow a man must enter sideways. Onesimus knocked on the door. A wicket in the logs opened; and we, who laugh at wickets in the doors of monastic houses, would do well to recall how and why such wickets were first used. They were used to save the lives of those who kept the faith for us. A woman’s face appeared in the wicket. It was a face in its late thirties, but it was a face that would always be young; for it had not a line of care or envy. Was it the moonlight; or was it a trick of Onesimus’ own memories of Paul long ago in the prison hut of Rome; for the face wore the radiance that artists have vainly tried to portray in halo?