The quenchless light

by Agnes C. Laut

There was no mistaking that aged and beautiful figure—dressed in pure white, with cork sandals, with hair and beard as white as washed silk, and brow as lineless and radiant as the snowy mountain peaks—standing calmly against one of the Temple pillars to the side of the high smoke-clouded altar; but when Onesimus would have pressed forward to him, he found the way through the last cloister stopped by a half-dozen bloodhounds tied to the Temple columns to prevent the rescue of Apollos by his followers; and one glance told Onesimus that Apollos stood so motionless because he was bound by ankles and wrists to the upright column.

“Bah,” said a bearded Roman guard clad in armor to his eyes, who was standing behind the leashed bloodhounds, “he saved others; let him save himself! He raised others from death by his magic tricks. Now he’s dead man himself under this wolf pack if he budge a hair, where he stands. Give me the leashes. I’ll let the line out to close on him, when the singing stops,” and suiting the act to the word, the Roman took the leash ends of the bloodhounds and gave them line to creep up within touch of the bound man if he but stirred a hair’s breadth.

Onesimus moved up cautiously behind the Roman. He had the short dirk in his belt that all Greeks wore, and from the gold cord round his neck hung the usual traveler’s sword.

He was of two minds—whether to trip the Roman guard and snatch the bloodhounds’ leash, or jump forward in the gathering cloud of mist and incense, cut Apollos’ bonds and himself divert the attack of the bloodhounds—when he noticed something with his keen mountaineer eye that the Roman guard did not see. Apollos’ wrists and ankles had been bound to the pillar by deer thongs. The hounds had sniffed forward and were licking at the deer thongs; and through the dark, Apollos’ gleaming black eyes were boring to Onesimus’ very soul with unspoken message. They forbade word or move for his rescue. They seemed to redirect the younger man’s glance back to the bloodhounds. The blood hounds were licking the deer thongs and the raw hide was stretching as it always stretches when wet, and Apollos had let it slip down over his hands from his wrists to the floor, where the dogs, in growling and snarling to snatch at it, had bitten through the thongs binding his ankles.

The Apostle did not move by a hair’s breadth. His brow was radiant with a glowing light and his hair shone like fuller’s white.

The cymbals clashed. The silver trumpets blew. The lines of chanting priests had seized bells to ring in rhythm and fans to send up the clouds of incense. And there was heard the hunting horn of Diana coming down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps—the vestal virgins’ high clear soprano gave back refrain to the chant of the priests—when a blast of wind from the tidal waves of Diana’s stallions and mares champing out to sea, blew through the Temple pillars, sending the clouds of incense and mist back over the worshipers.

Onesimus saw Apollos leap from the pillar to the altar stairs; and when the Roman guard would have unleashed the hounds to tear him down, an unseen foot tripped the soldier to his face on the tessellated floor of the Temple, and the hounds were upon the fellow in a savage attack that called the attention of the priests. Taking quick advantage of the diversion and the back-blown cloud of sea mist and incense smoke, Onesimus with a bound followed his Master, who had passed swiftly to the stairs behind the altar, that led both to the vestal virgins’ galleries above and to the famous underground labyrinths of Crete.

“Follow me not, beloved! Farewell,” Apollos had turned. “Escape back to the ship with your seaman and his daughter! Take them to Thecla in the caves! Seek me not! Farewell for a little time—”

Again the cymbals clashed. Again the silver trumpets blew. Again the bells rang in rhythm to the chant of the priests and refrain of vestals. Again the fans sent back the cloud of incense above the altar. Again was heard Diana’s hunting horn coming down from the fleecy meadows of mid-heaven to pasture her stallions and mares in the ocean deeps; but of Apollos was nought to be seen.

“Bah,” said a Roman guard standing near the astounded Bishop of Ephesus, “ ’twas but a trick of levitation, which all these Eastern magic fellows play. The fellow has lifted himself up by his sandal straps and disappeared through the clouds of smoke, as he did when he was tried before our Emperor Domitian for tearing a boy’s entrails out. Wasn’t I there? Didn’t I see him? Didn’t he defy our Emperor to his face? They could prove nothing against the scoundrel—he wraps himself in his cloak like this”—the guard imitated a man hiding his face in his cape— “I see him plain as I see you, we all see him, the Emperor was about to have him seized and burned as all these Greeks and Jewish sorcerers ought to be burned—and there, as we look, the knave disappears from our very eyes and reappears down in a cave among his followers by the sea, where he takes ship and flees for Asia again. If I’d been Emperor, I’d have had him seized where found and burned on the spot. ’Tis only a trick of levitation—holding the breath, mumbling a hocus-pocus, and up they go—”