ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
News of the appearance of the plague in the house of Costobarus
traveled fast after the death of the gardener, who had fallen in the
open and in sight of the watchful inhabitants of Ascalon. So by the
time the house servants of the merchant were made aware of their peril
by the death of one of their own number, Philip of Tyre with the
courage of affection and loyalty stood on the threshold of the
guest-chamber informed of the situation and prepared to help. Hannah,
supported by the Tyrian's assurance of her rescue and protection,
succeeded in urging Costobarus and Laodice not to delay for her to the
peril of the thrice precious daughter.
So with his house yet ringing with the first convulsion of terror
Costobarus ordered his party with all haste to the camels.
Keturah, Laodice's handmaiden, had fainted with terror and was carried
parcel-wise over the great arm of Momus, the mute, out into the street
and deposited summarily on the floor of Laodice's bamboo howdah. The
camel-driver, Hiram, seemed only a little less stupefied than she. The
mute, with a face as determined and threatening as an uplifted gad,
drove him from the shelter of a dark corner out to his place on the
neck of his master's camel. Aquila, the emissary, showed the
immemorial composure in the face of disaster that was the badge of the
Roman in the days of the degenerate Cæsars, and, mounting his horse
when the rest of the party were in their places, headed the procession
toward the northeast.
From an upper window behind a lattice, Hannah cried her farewells and
fluttered her scarf. She was smiling the drawn, white smile of a
mother who is forcing herself to be cheerful in the face of danger,
for the peace of those she loves. Laodice understood the tender
deception and when a sharp turn of the street cut off the sight of the
plumy trees of the garden, she covered her face and wept inconsolably.
On either side of the passage there came muffled sounds from houses;
out of open alleys leading into interior courts stole the fetor of
death that even the spice of burning unguents could not smother. The
whole air shuddered with the drumming of heathen physicians in the
pagan quarters, through which the silence of long stretches of
ominously quiet houses shouted its meaning. At times frantic barefoot
flights could be glimpsed as households deserted stricken houses, but
whatever outcry arose came from bedsides. Ascalon fled as a frightened
animal flees, silently and under cover.
They rode now through a shrieking wind, burdened with sallow smoke and
dreadful odors. Denser and denser the cloud grew till the streets
ahead were hidden in yellow vapor and near-by houses loomed with dim
outlines as if far off, and even the sounds of death and disaster
became choked in the immense prevalence of smell. Blinded, with scarf
and kerchief wrapped over mouth and nostril, the fleeing party swept
down upon the very heart of that stifling mystery. Through it
presently, as the houses thinned out, they saw cores of great heat
surmounted by black-tipped flames that crackled savagely. Momus, now
in the lead, turned sharply to his right and the next instant had the
wind behind him. Almost involuntarily each member of the party looked
back. Outside the breach of the broken wall, standing clear to view
with the wind from the hills sweeping townward from them, were
diabolical figures, naked and black, feeding immense pyres with
hideous fuel.
Past this grisly line, a camel with a single rider swept in from
seaward. The traveler lifted an arm and signaled to the party. Aquila
seemed not to see this hail, and rode on; but Costobarus, after the
traveler motioned to them once more, spoke:
"Does not this person make signs to us, Aquila?"
The pagan looked back.
"Why should he?" he asked.
"He can tell us," the master observed and spoke to Momus and Hiram,
who drew up their camels. The traveler raced alongside.
It was a woman, veiled and wrapped with all the jealous care of the
East against the curious eyes of strangers. Aquila took in her
featureless presence with a single irritated look and apparently lost
interest.
"Greeting, lady," Costobarus said.
"Peace, sir, and greeting," she replied respectfully. Her tones were
marked with the deference of the serving-class and Costobarus gave her
permission to speak.
"Art thou a Jew and master of this train?" she asked.
Costobarus assented.
"I was journeying to Jerusalem with a caravan of which my master was
owner, but the Romans came upon us and took every one prisoner, except
myself. I escaped, but I am without protection and without friends. In
Jerusalem, I have relatives who will care for me, yet I fear to make
the journey alone. I pray thee, with the generosity of a Jew and the
authority of a master, permit me to go in the protection of thy
company!"
Costobarus reflected and while he hesitated he became aware that Momus
was looking at him with warning in his eyes. But Laodice, so filled
with loneliness and apprehension, was moved to sympathy for the
solitary and friendless woman. She leaned toward her father and said
in a low voice:
"Let her come with us, father; she is a woman and afraid."
Aquila heard that low petition and he flashed a look at the stranger
that seemed reproachful. But Costobarus was speaking.
"Ride with us, then, and be welcome," he said.
The woman bowed her shawled head and murmured with emotion after a
silence:
"The blessings of a servant be upon you and yours; may the God of
Israel be with you for evermore."
She dropped back to the rear of the party and the train moved on.
Meanwhile, Keturah, who sat huddled on the floor of Laodice's howdah,
had not moved since they had left the doorway of Costobarus' house.
Momus, on the neck of Laodice's camel, had observed her once or twice,
and now he reached back and touched her. He jerked his hand away and
brought up his camel with a wrench. Hiram, following close behind, by
dint of main strength managed to avoid a collision with Momus' beast
so suddenly halted. The mute leaped down from his place and in an
instant Costobarus joined him. Alarmed without understanding, Laodice
had risen and was drawn as far as she might from the serving-woman.
Momus, lifting himself by the stirrup, seized the stiff figure and
laid it down upon the sands. Aquila dismounted and the three men bent
over the woman. Then Costobarus glanced up quickly at Laodice, made a
sign to Momus, who, with a face devoid of expression, climbed back
into his place on the neck of the camel.
The strange woman who had stood her ground was heard to say in a low
voice, half lost in the muffling of her wrappings:
"One!"
Momus drove on leisurely and Laodice, knowing that she must not look,
slipped down in her place and wrapped her vitta over her face.
Pestilence was riding with them.
After a long time, Costobarus' camel ambled up beside hers, and she
ventured to uncover her eyes. Her father smiled at her with that same
heart-breaking smile which her mother had for her in face of trouble.
"The frosts! The frosts!" he whispered to Momus, and the mute laid
goad about his camel.
Aquila, seeing this haste, checked his horse's gait and fell back
beside the strange woman. Together they permitted the rest of the
party to ride ahead, while they talked in voices too restrained to be
heard.
"There is pestilence in this company," Aquila said angrily; "will that
not persuade you to abandon this plan?"
"No. When all of you are like to die and leave this great treasure
sitting out in the wilderness without a guardian?" she said lightly.
There was no trace of a servant's humility in her tone.
"Hast had the plague that thou seem'st to feel secure from it?" he
demanded.
"O no; then there would be no risk in this game. There is no sport in
an unfair advantage over conditions. No! But how comes this Costobarus
with you?"
"He would not trust his daughter and a dowry to me, alone."
"How shall we get to Emmaus, then?" she asked.
"We shall not get to Emmaus; so you must inform Julian, who will
expect us there," he declared.
The woman played with the silken reins of her camel. Behind her veil a
sarcastic smile played about the corners of her mouth. Aquila watched
her resentfully, waiting with an immense reserve of caustic words for
her refusal to accept the charge.
"So, my Mars of the gray temples, thou meanest in all faith to deliver
up this lady and her treasure to Julian?"
"By those same gray temples, I do! And hold thy peace about my white
hairs. Nothing made them so but thyself--and this evil plot in which I
am tangled. What does Julian mean to do with this poor creature?"
"He has not got her yet and by the complication thou seest now,
wearing its turban over one ear in yonder howdah, it may come to pass
that he will never have her--and her dowry."
"Pfui! How little you know this Julian! Besides, I am pledged to
deliver him--at least the treasure."
"And thou meanest to line his purse with this great treasure because
he paid thee to do it?"
"I shall; and be rid of it!"
The woman smiled sarcastically.
"And scorn it for thyself?"
Aquila made no answer, but rode on in sulky silence.
"Perpol, it must be pleasant to be a queen," the woman observed with
an assumption of childishness in her voice.
"Peril's own habit!" Aquila declared.
"Peril! Fie! That is half the pleasure of this game of life. It is
tiresome to live any other way than hazardously."
"Thou shalt have pleasure enough in this journey thou art to take,"
Aquila declared a little threateningly.
The woman laughed. When Aquila spoke again, his voice was full of
concern.
"I was a fool for not forcing you to stay in Ascalon. You are
reckless--reckless!"
"It was that which made me attractive," the woman broke in, "to Nero,
to Vitellius and to you."
"Reckless and useless!" Aquila went on decisively. "Hear me, now; I
trifle no longer. Sometime to-night thou'lt leave us and journey to
Emmaus and inform Julian what has wrecked his plans, and send him with
despatch to Zorah. This thou wilt do, by all the Furies, or when I do
catch thee as I shall, since there is no other fool in Judea who will
undertake to feed thee, I shall leave the print of my displeasure on
thee from thy head to thy heel! Mark me!"
The woman laughed aloud, with such peculiar insolence and amusement
that one of the servants heard her and turned his head that way.
"Pah! What a timid villain thou art," the woman said, when the servant
looked away again. "How much better it would have been had Julian
fixed upon _me_ as his confederate!"
"Not for Julian! You plot against him even now. But say what you will,
you go to Emmaus to-night, without fail. I have spoken!"
Aquila touched his horse and riding away from the woman came up beside
Costobarus who was gazing over the country through which they were
passing.
It was a great plain, advancing by benches and slopes to the edge of a
rocky shore. Without forests, spotted only with verdure, vast, barren,
exhausted with the constant production of fourteen centuries, it was a
cheerless sea-front at its best. To the west the wash of the tideless
Mediterranean tumbled along an unindented coast; to the east the
sallow stony earth went up and up, toward an ever receding sallow
horizon. Between lay humbled towns, wholly abandoned to the bats and
to the ignoble wild life of the Judean wilderness. There were no sheep
or cattle. Vespasian had passed that way and required the flocks of
the nation for the subsistence of his four legions. There were no
olive or fig groves. They had been the first to fall under the Roman
ax, for the policy of Roman warfare was that the first step in
subduing a rebellious province was to starve it. The vineyards had
suffered the same end. The enriched soil of these inclosures, made one
now with the wild at the leveling of their hedges, produced acres of
profitless weeds, green against the rising brown bosom of the
hill-fronts. Here and there were the fallen walls of isolated
homes--wastes of masonry already losing all domestic signs. There were
no gardens; it had been two seasons since the wheat and the barley had
been reaped last, and the seaboard of southern Judea, in the path of
Rome the destroyer, was a wilderness.
Over all this immense slope the eyes of Costobarus wandered. However
he had felt in the preceding days when he looked upon this ruin of the
land of milk and honey, he realized now suddenly and in all its
fearful actuality the predicament of Judea, its despair and the
gigantic travail before those who would save it from the united
sentence passed upon it by God and the powers. Immense dejection
seized him. He looked from the face of the country, upon which not a
single thing of profit showed, toward the bowed head and oppressed
figure of his young and inexperienced daughter who was to put her
tender self between Ruin and its victim. Chills, succeeded by flashes
of fever, swept over him. He raised himself as if to give command to
Aquila but settled back under the canopy, grown immeasurably older and
feebler in that moment of helpless surrender to conditions of which he
had been part an artificer. It was not as if he had made an incautious
move in a political game; it was, as it seemed to him undeniably then,
that he had advanced against the Lord God of Hosts, and there was no
turning back!
He settled slowly into a stunned anguish that seemed to rise
gradually, like a filling tide, shutting out the sunset and the
seaboard, the bald earth and the streaming wind, and engulfing him in
roaring darkness and intense cold.
They were in sight of a cluster of Syrian huts, the first inhabited
village they had come upon since leaving Ascalon, but he was not aware
of it. The sudden halting of his camel and a hoarse strained cry at
hand seemed to bear some relation to his condition, but he did not
care. He felt his howdah lurch to one side as some one leaped up
beside him; he felt remotely the great grasp of hands on him, which
must have been Momus'; the quick military voice of Aquila he heard and
then, keen and distinct as a call upon him, the sound of Laodice's
tones made sharp with terror.
He opened his eyes and saw her, holding him in her arms. Somewhere in
the background were the faces of Momus and Aquila. Between the pagan
and the old servant passed a look that the old man caught. Then he
heard Aquila say:
"The village--his sole chance, if there is a physician there."
Laodice held him fast only for a moment, when it seemed that she was
wrenched away. The dying man was glad. If this were pestilence, she
should not come near. The hiss of the lash and the bound of the stung
camel disturbed him but he lapsed into the immense cold again as they
raced down the slight declivity toward the Syrian village. But
Pestilence was riding with them and the odds were with it.
But the dwellers of that little huddle of huts had nothing to do but
to sit in their doorways and suspect. Whatever came their way from the
sea for many months had brought them disaster and long since they had
learned to defend themselves. So now, when a party riding at breakneck
speed, bearing with them an old man on whom the inertia of death was
plain, came across the frontiers of their little town, they met them
with the convenient stones of their rocky streets, with their savage,
stark-ribbed dogs, with offal from kitchen heap and donkey stall and
with insults and curses.
"Away, ye bringers of plague! Out, lepers; be gone, ye unclean!"
Laodice and Aquila who rode in the open were fair targets for half the
hail that fell about them. The girl groaned as the missiles fell into
the howdah upon the helpless shape of Costobarus, who did not lift a
hand to fend off the stones. The pagan, bruised and raging, drew his
weapon and spurred his horse to ride down his assailants, but they
scattered before him and from safe refuge continued their assault with
redoubled determination.
Momus, seeing only injury in attempting to enforce hospitality, turned
his camel and, swinging around the outermost limits of the settlement,
fled. Aquila followed him, and a moment later the rest of the party
joined them.
Without the range of the village, the party halted. Momus and Aquila
lifted Costobarus down and laid him on a rug that Laodice had spread
for him. But when she would have knelt by him, he motioned to Aquila
not to permit her to approach. The mute stood by his master. In that
countenance fast passing under shade was written charge and injunction
as solemn as the darkness that approached him.
"Here, O faithful servant, is the wife of a prince, the daughter of
thy master, the joy of thine own declining days. Shield her against
wrong and misfortune by all the strength that in thee lies, as thou
hopest in the King to come and the reward of the steadfast. Promise!"
They were silent lips that once knew the art and the sound of speech.
The old habit never entirely fell away from them. Under this anguish
they moved--fruitlessly; over the deformed face flitted the keen
agony of regret; then he lifted his great left arm and bent it upward
at the elbow; the huge, even monstrous muscles, knotted and kinked
from shoulder to elbow, sank down under the broad barbarian bracelet
of bronze and rippled under and rose again from elbow to wrist,
ferocious, superhuman! In that movement the dying man read the mute's
consecration of his one great strength to the protection of the
tenderly loved Laodice. Costobarus motioned to the shittim-wood casket
and Momus undid it and strapped it on his own belt.
"The frosts! The frosts!" the dying man whispered. The mute
understood. Then the father's eyes wandered toward the figure of his
daughter fended away from him by the pagan. The agony of her suffering
and the agony of his distress for her bridged the space between them.
And while they yearned toward each other in a silence that quivered
with pain, the light darkened in Costobarus' eyes.
When Laodice came to herself, she was laid upon a spot of rough grass,
in the shelter of an overhanging bluff. It was not the scene upon
which her sorrow-stunned eyes had closed a while before. The village
was nowhere in sight; the plain had been left behind; any further view
was shut off by Aquila's horse, and the two camels whose bridles were
in the hands of Hiram. Beside the stricken girl knelt Momus and
Aquila; standing at her feet was a new-comer, on whom her wandering and
half-conscious gaze rested.
He was an old man, clad in a short tunic, ragged of hem and girt about
him with a rope. Barefoot, bareheaded and provided only with a staff
and a small wallet, he was to outward appearances little more than one
of the legion of mendicants that infested the poverty-stricken land of
Judea. But his large eyes, under the tangle of wind-blown white hair
and white shelving brows, were infinitely intelligent and refined.
Now, they beamed with pity and concern on the bereaved girl.
But she forgot him the next instant, for returning consciousness
brought back like a blow the memory of the death of her father.
From time to time she caught snatches of conversation between the old
wayfarer and Aquila. They were spoken in low tones and only from time
to time did they reach her.
"He was Costobarus, principal merchant of this coast," she heard
Aquila explain shortly.
"I shall go on to Ascalon; I do not fear," the old man said next. "I
shall bring his people to fetch his body. I marked the spot. Comfort
her with that, when she can bear to talk of it."
"We go to Jerusalem," Aquila went on, some time later, "else we should
turn back with him ourselves. But we dare not risk the pestilence on
her account, for it seems that she is very necessary to the Jews at
this hour--very necessary."
"I follow to the Holy City," the old wayfarer added at last. "The
Passover is celebrated there within two weeks. But I shall not fail;
nothing will harm me."
"What talisman do you carry to protect you?" the pagan asked a little
irritably.
"No talisman, but the love of Jesus Christ, the Saviour!"
"A Christian!" Aquila exclaimed.
Even through her stupor of grief and hopelessness, Laodice heard this
exclamation. Here, then, was one of the Nazarenes, that mysterious
sect whose tenets she had never been permitted to hear; But also, she
knew that the old apostate had braved the plague and had buried her
father. She turned to look at him in time to see him extend his hands
in blessing over her.
"_The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and his comfort be with you, for
ever; amen_. Farewell."
He was gone. Momus raised her in his arms and, lifting her into her
howdah, laid her tenderly on the improvised reclining seat that had
been made of the chair therein. In a twinkling the whole party had
mounted, and passed swiftly on toward Jerusalem. As they moved
forward, the strange woman murmured softly:
"Two!"
Laodice's camel mounted the slope toward the east and stretched away
on a comparative level toward an immense white moon. Aquila's horse
kept up with the matchless speed of the tall camel only at times, and
Laodice, dully sensing that they were going at hot haste, realized
that a race was on between them and the pestilence. Momus was wielding
the goad for a run to the frosts.
A camel raced up beside Aquila.
"Look!" the woman said to him in a lowered tone, showing back over the
road by which they had come. Aquila turned in his saddle and looked.
Momus rose in his seat and looked. Behind them only one camel rocked
along in their wake. The other and its driver had disappeared.
"Deserted!" Aquila exclaimed under his breath.
"Three!" the woman said.
"A pest on your counting for a Charon's toll-taker!" Aquila whispered
savagely. "We will have no more of it!"
"No?" the woman said with a meaning that made the pagan shiver.
Momus laid goad about his camel.
The way continually ascended toward the east; the soil was no longer
sandy, but rocky; no longer given up to desolate gardens, but black
with groves of cedars and highland shrubs. They swung off a plateau
that would have ended in a cliff, down a shaly sheep-path into a wady.
Under the moonlight, the bottom was seen to be scarred with marks of
hoof and wheel. It debouched suddenly into a Roman road, straight,
level, magnificently built and running as a bird flies on to
Jerusalem.
The camel's gait increased. Momus settled himself in a securer
position and Laodice, careless of the outcome of this breathless
hurry, yielded herself to the careen of her howdah. At times, her
indifferent vision caught, through moonlit notches and gaps, glimpses
of great blue vapors, crowned with pale fire and piled in glorious
disorder low on the eastern horizon. They were the hills encompassing
Jerusalem. The stream of wind on her face cooled and drove stronger.
Aquila rode closer to her, his horse panting under the effort. His
face looked strange and distressed.
"Lady," he said in low tones, "necessity forces me to speak to you in
your grief; do not blame me for indifference to your desire to be
alone. But we must care for you, though in your heart this moment you
may resent a wish to live. But your father commanded me!"
She gave him attention.
"Let us not carry peril with us," he added in a half-whisper. "Let us
not carry food for pestilence with us."
"I do not understand," she answered, adopting his low tone.
"The more we are, the more of us to die. You must live; I must live,"
he explained, nodding toward Momus.
After a little silence, she asked:
"Do we not ride toward the frosts?"
"Yes; but even now pestilence may ride on beside us--your servant and
this woman. Let us save ourselves."
"Abandon them?" she questioned.
"Lest they go on without us," he added.
Momus turned suddenly and gazed at Aquila. Then he imperiously signed
the pagan to fall back.
They rode on.
The pagan slackened his horse's gallop and reined in beside the woman.
They talked together, argumentatively, for a single tense minute and
then Aquila, with a bitter word, put spurs to his animal and dashed up
beside Laodice's camel. In his one uplifted hand a knife gleamed. The
other reached toward the casket bound to Momus' hip. Laodice, raised
to an upright attitude in her fresh fright, saw that his face was
black and twisted and that he wavered stiffly in his saddle.
But the mute did not await the attack. He seized the pagan's
outstretched hands with that monstrous left and flung him backward.
Without an effort to save himself, falling rigidly and with a strange
cry, Aquila dropped back over his horse's crupper into the dust of the
road.
"Momus!" Laodice screamed.
Back of her the woman cried out:
"On! On! It is the pestilence!"
Momus wielded his goad. Laodice, shaking and crying aloud, looked back
to see the strange woman swerve her camel past the dark shape lying
with out-flung arms in the road and sweep quickly on after them.
The scourge had overtaken Aquila.
All night the camels fled east, all night the soft footfall of the
woman's beast pursued them; all night the wind freshened until
Laodice's bared face stiffened with the cold and the breath of the
mute that sat upon her camel's neck steamed in the moonlight. Up and
up, by steep and winding wadies they mounted; under overhanging cliffs
and past bald towers of hill-rock staring white in the moon, along
black passes between brooding eminences of solid night, crowned with
ghost-light; over high plateaus darkened with groves, down dales with
singing, invisible streams running seaward and up again and on until
the hills engulfed them wholly and those before were higher than any
they had seen. Then their flying beasts, leaving the Roman road over
which they had sped for some distance, followed a sheep-path and burst
into an open immersed in moonlight. Below in the distance was a
cluster of huts, white and lifeless. But abroad, over the crisp grass
and misty white on all the exposed slopes, sparkled the deep hoar
frost!