"Only in being true to thee have I any hope of life, for thy enemies are my enemies. I also will at times to attend at the school of Gamaliel, as I told thee."
"That is thy value to me," said Pontius. "Wert thou any man's bondservant, or wert thou other than a youth, a scholar of Gamaliel, I would have no use for thee. All they of his manner of teaching are handicraftsmen, even if they are rich. What is thy work?"
"I am a shaper of arrows," said Lysias, "and I know the making of a bow. Thou mayest yet require to have a sharp arrow sent surely to a mark of thy choosing."
"Say thou no more!" commanded the procurator. "Thou art wise to preserve thy head. Only a fool throweth away his life. Go!"
For they had walked out along the passage and before them was a gate of the palace. It was not the great gate, but even here were armed legionaries, and their officer and others with him took note of Lysias and of the manner of his sending.
"He is the trusted messenger of the procurator," said one. "I heard of him from the captain of the temple. When he hath borne many messages we shall cease to see him."
Lysias passed on down the steep street in his brilliant armor as one having a shadow of authority, but his heart was bitter within him.
"I am to see her again," he murmured. "I would she were dead and I dead with her. I will but live to strike this unknown one, even if I stab him with a blade of Pontius. But I must be cunning with these Saxons. Do I not know what manner of pirates they are? Not among any other crew, I think, shall I find men so tall and so strong as are my old comrades from The Sword. Their jarl would be a prince of gladiators, but I am not glad that he and his come now to Jerusalem."
Away behind him in the palace, in the room where he had met her, sat Sapphira.