“I remember little more after that, till I found myself committed to the care of old Ezra, the Jew, by brave Claudius, who rescued me from death, and bade me say to you, dear Hyacintha, that he had fulfilled his vow made to the gods and to you, and had saved the life of the slave whom you loved.”
“Whom I must love always,” Hyacintha murmured. “But how was it done?”
“I have since heard from Ezra that his daughter died on her toilsome journey from Verulam to Radburn, and that Claudius, finding him weeping over her body, took it up and carried it to the dungeon, where he left it with Agatha, and carried me away. I have never heard what befel Agatha—my friend and mother—for a mother in Christ she was, truly, to me.”
Severus’s letter to his son became intelligible now. The boy sprang to his feet.
“I can tell you,” he said. “Both women, so my father writes in his letter—both women were found dead in their cell, and their bodies were burned to ashes the next morning. My father believes that you, Ebba, were one of those women.”
Anna raised her eyes to the sky above her, and the tears which gathered there flowed down her cheeks.
“She is with Him whom she loved, in Paradise,” she said, “only, would that our Father had taken me with her!”
“Dear Ebba, do not grieve,” Hyacintha said.
“Nay,” Casca sighed out, “nay, it is over for her, it is to come for you and for me. Tell me where I can get instruction in the faith of which you speak.”
“Come to the Via Appia in the early morning, or in the late evening. I will be on the watch, for I steal thither unperceived, as hundreds of our faith steal. In the last sleeping-place of the Christians the faith of the living is built up, and you shall be instructed in that faith. Think you, Casca, that there is no Rome but that which you see? Yes, there is a Rome, invisible to all mortal eyes, over which the angels watch the Christian people of the great city, who are compelled to worship their Lord in secret and silence.”