Eleazar looked from the casement and through the door, [pg 334]to assure himself against listeners; then he filled the Briton’s cup once more, and proceeded with his confidences.
“Around that dried-up fountain,” said he, pointing to the terraces on which his stately house was built, “there lie seven slabs of marble, with which its basin is paved. If you put the point of your sword under the left-hand corner of the centre one, you may move it sufficiently to admit your hand. Lift it, and you find a staircase leading to a passage; follow that passage, in which a full-grown man can stand upright, and along which you may grope your way without fear, and you come to an egress choked up with a few faggots and briers. Burst through these, and, lo! you emerge beyond the Tower of Antonia, and within fifty paces of the Roman camp. Will you risk yourself amongst the enemy for Judah’s sake?”
“I have been nearer the Romans than fifty paces,” answered Esca proudly. “It is no great service you ask; and if they seize upon me as an escaped slave, and condemn me to the cross, what then? It is but a soldier’s duty I am undertaking after all. When shall I depart?”
Eleazar reflected for a moment. The other’s unscrupulous, unquestioning fidelity touched even his fierce heart to the quick. It would be, doubtless, death to the messenger, who, notwithstanding his character of herald, would be too surely treated as a mere runaway; but the message must be delivered, and who was there but Esca for him to send? He bent his brows, and proceeded in a harder tone—
“I have confided to you the secret way, that is known to but three besides in Jerusalem. I need keep nothing from you now. You shall bear my written proposals to Titus for a truce till the sun has again set twice, on certain terms; but those terms it will be safer for the messenger not to know. Will you run the risk, and when?”
“This instant, if they are ready,” answered the other boldly; but even while he spoke, Calchas entered the apartment; and Eleazar, conscious of the certain doom to which he was devoting his daughter’s preserver and his own guest, shrank from his brother’s eye, and would have retired to prepare his missive without further question.
Fierce and unscrupulous as he was, he could yet feel bitterly for the brave, honest nature that walked so unsuspiciously into the trap he laid. It was one thing to overreach a hostile general, and another to sacrifice a faithful and devoted friend. He had no hesitation in affecting treason to Titus, and promising the Romans that, if they would but grant him [pg 335]that day and the next, to obtain the supremacy of his own faction and chief power within the walls, he would deliver over the city, with the simple condition that the Temple should not be demolished, and the lives of the inhabitants should be spared. He acknowledged no dishonour in the determination, which he concealed in his own breast, to employ that interval strenuously in defensive works, and when it had elapsed to break faith unhesitatingly with his foe. In the cause of Judah—so thought this fanatic, half-soldier, half-priest—it was but a fair stratagem of war, and would, as a means of preserving the true faith, meet with the direct approval of Heaven. But it seemed hard—very hard—that, to secure these advantages, he must devote to certain destruction one who had sat at his board and lived under his roof for months; and a pang, of which he did not care to trace the origin, smote the father’s heart when he thought of Mariamne’s face, and her question to-morrow, “Where is Esca? and why is he not come back?”
He took his brother aside, and told him, shortly, that Esca was going as a messenger of peace to the Roman camp. Calchas looked him full in the face, and shook his head.
“Brother,” said he, “thy ways are tortuous, though thy bearing is warlike and bold. Thou trustest too much to the sword of steel and the arm of flesh—the might of man’s strength, which a mere pebble on the pavement can bring headlong to the ground; and the scheming of man’s brain, which cannot foresee, even for one instant, the trifle that shall baffle and confound it in the next. It is better to trust boldly in the right. This youth is of our own household: he is more to us than friend and kindred. Wouldst thou send him up with his hands bound to the sacrifice? Brother, thou shalt not do this great sin!”
“What would you?” said Eleazar impatiently. “Every man to his duty. The priest to the offering; the craftsman to his labour; the soldier to the wall. He alone knows the secret passage. Whom have I but Esca to send?”