“Then I thought to reach Radburn, where I knew the people were more friendly; and hearing a small body of Roman soldiers were guarding some prisoners there, I essayed to ascend the steps to the guard-house, and here my child struggled hard for breath. I sat me down with her, and then all was still—her spirit had departed, and Ichabod is my name!”
Anna had heard of the Jewish race, and knew that her Lord had been born of them. She knew, also, that the Jews had crucified Him, and that the Cross had been set on a hill in their city. Once she remembered to have seen a man richly clothed in long garments, and heard that he had come with merchandise and pearls to the Roman nobles. He was one of the scattered people, who, like the Greeks, were sometimes conveyed to Britain in the train of the Romans. But Anna knew little about the Jews. Agatha had, indeed, while rehearsing in her ears many of the instructions which had fallen from the lips of Amphibalus and Heraclius, told her of the Jews’ city, Jerusalem, and how the Romans held the province as they held Britain; and that the Jews, as a punishment for their sins, were sent forth to wander restlessly over the face of the earth. But all this time a Jew was seldom seen in Britain except as an appendage of some great person, so that Anna had never seen other Jews besides the man in the rich garment, of whom she heard afterwards that he had been robbed of his treasures and slain on the highway, no one interfering to save or protect him.
Her heart was filled with strange doubts as she heard the Jew, who denounced her Saviour with fury, pray to his Lord Jehovah, and chant in a low monotone from a roll of parchment which he kept hidden in the breast of his robe, and fastened by a band round his neck. The low, monotonous chant was one of the Psalms of David—the Penitential Psalm—
“Out of the deep have I called.”
But the Hebrew rhythm, though pleasant to the ear, was an unknown tongue to the British maiden, and while Ezra chanted and wept, Anna, soothed, she scarcely knew why, rested on a skin which was spread upon the floor of the hut, and slept till Ezra awoke her and said they must push on towards the sea.
Fatigue and hunger, and weariness of body and mind, had dulled the sense of pain for the time; but when her powers were more fully awake, the hideous scenes of the stoning of Amphibalus, the mad shouts of the people, and the darkness of the dungeon, became once more a haunting reality. Then came the bitter fear of what might have been the fate of Agatha, her tender friend, who had been left fainting and ill in darkness and solitude with the dead, while she, who had shared so many dangers with her, was borne away. She reproached herself for cowardice, and in broken words, with many tears, prayed the Jew to let her return towards Radburn.
But Ezra was proof against her entreaties, and bade her thank Jehovah for the life He had spared; nor waste strength and time in feeble wailings.
“I have lost my only one,” he said, “the only thing left to me in this land of strangers; but I go on towards Rome, the great city, where a company of my people is gathered, and thence to Jerusalem to lay my bones where the prophets and righteous men have laid theirs; nor will I weakly faint or fail of my purpose. I was on my way to the sea coast when this misfortune befel me, to find by chance a little company, with whom my child and I might be protected through Gaul. We push on thither now, and may the Almighty be our strong tower and house of defence.”
This prayer was answered, and the longing fulfilled; the Jew and the maiden were mercifully protected from harm.
Their quiet, inoffensive bearing, their sorrowful faces and gentle demeanour, served as a shield as they passed through the widely-scattered villages of the old Britons and the more pretentious towns of their conquerors the Romans. They reached the fort of Lyme in safety, and Claudius’s gold pieces purchased their passage across the stormy channel in one of those strangely-built boats, with large curved prow and short mast, which had taken the place of the mud-lined coracles of the conquered race.