ARDATH, THE FIELD OF FLOWERS
Three women sat cooped in the great fortress of Machærus, east of the
Dead Sea, peeved that a war for world power had interfered with their
own personal plans and petty intrigues. The rose-tinted mountains of
Moab rose far to the east, tier on tier above the Desert, dyed in a
mystic fire of cloud and light that might have been the abode of gods
from eternity. North and south, you could have dropped a pebble from the
turret, where the women sat, down precipice sheer as a wall twenty-five
hundred feet. West, the clouds boiled a silver sea far below the Fort
bastion on the blue and green of deep translucent waters. These waters
are to-day known as the Dead Sea. At that time, they were called the
Asphaltis Sea owing to the pungent burnt odor of petroleum and sulphur,
that came up from their hot springs.
Safe as an eagle’s nest above the storm clouds perched the Fort on the
mountain height, where rulers’ wives and daughters were housed from
stress of war and raid, but angry as an eagle’s young were the strident
voices of these pampered favorites of harem and court, that the blood of
men flowing deep as the horses’ bridles over at the siege of Jerusalem,
should be keeping these caged birds from the garden of joy in life.
The elder women rose petulantly and stood at the deep casement of the
window in the open turret, where the breeze came up from the silver
clouds lying below on the Sea. By the uncertain feeling out of her hands
for the stone wall, it was apparent she was almost blind. Her hair lay
lustrous black on her brow, but here and there a silver line showed she
was past middle age, and the slight film across the pupils of her black
eyes betrayed the cataract obscuring light.
“A curse on these seditious Judeans,” she protested, tapping her
sandaled foot impatiently on the stone floor. “Rome gave them the best
government they have ever had—justice, safety, forums, aqueducts,
theaters, low taxes; and what have they returned to Rome for protection
from enemies east and west? Rebellion for seventy years! First Herod the
Great slew some brats in Bethlehem; and he must needs go mad with
jealousy and strangle his Jewess wife, and be haunted ever after by her
pale ghost in this accursed Fort! Then because I chose to love the
Second Herod instead of his brother Philip, to whom I was sold as child,
I must be taunted as a sinner of the streets by the little Hermit John;
and my Lord Herod must turn soft because he loved the ragged madman’s
‘rough honest ways.’ Honest? I call it insolence and would have torn his
tongue out if I could! What right have raving fanatics to pry open
private lives? I got him prisoned in the dungeon here for two full years
before I caught my Lord Herod in his cups and settled the Hermit’s mad
impudence with the headman’s sword. . . .”
The two other women, who were yet in the flush of first youth, rose and
joined the elder in the open window of the turret. One was short, with
crafty laughing eyes and full voluptuous inviting lips, and the air of
insolence in her beauty that could challenge life. The other was tall
and slender with eyes that dreamed, but what or how they dreamed no soul
outside her own deep thoughts could know.
“Then, Aunt,” pleaded the slenderer of the two, throwing an arm tenderly
around the blind woman, “with your mad Hermit dead, why rage and bruise
yourself against the past?”
“Little soft dreaming fool!” The blind woman petulantly threw the girl’s
arm from her waist. “Have you forgotten when my Lord Herod’s first
wife—that discarded rag of treachery, who could not hold the love I
won—went back to her father, the King of Arabia, and roused all the
tribes to attack us here, we lost? We lost, and I was blamed, and my
Lord was banished first to the barbarians of the Danube and then to the
savages of Spain, to whom I must go unless you can snare Titus, the
Emperor’s son, over in the siege of Jerusalem there. Only you can save
the last of Herod’s line—Bernice.”
The younger woman designated Bernice gazed deep in the silver clouds
boiling above the Dead Sea.
“Much chance I have to snare Titus shut up here away from the warriors
of Jerusalem; but if we Herod women must be played as pawns to win
kingdoms, let us play pawn for the biggest prize of all—Rome.”
The elder woman had placed her elbows on the casement of the window and
sank her face in her hands.
“If you were not such a little fool of dreams, Niece Bernice, you would
never have left Jerusalem. You would have stayed on in the Temple Herod
built, paying your vows, if you had to cling to the Altar horns! You
were wife of Herod Third; and who did more for the Judeans? Free feasts,
free games, you remember Cæsarea; and all because your Lord let the Jews
stone James, that zealot of the Nazarene, know you what the populace
says? They say their God, whom no one has even seen, slew your husband
in his coat of silver mail!”
“I thank their God for that,” absently answered the girl Bernice. “Herod
Third was too old. You chose your Herod. I was sold to mine.”
The other younger woman with the insolent inviting voluptuous lips
laughed.
“Because you had fallen in love with the little blue-eyed slave,
Onesimus, whom Felix and Festus rescued from the robber bands of
Galilee.”
“That slur sounds not well from you, Sister Drusilla! You, yourself,
married freed slave. Have you forgotten Felix was freed slave?” asked
the slenderer of the sisters.
Drusilla of the voluptuous lips laughed. “No, nor have I forgotten he is
the only one of all the Herod husbands who left his wife safe with
wealth in times of peril. He rose to be ruler under Rome. . . .”
“And drove the Jews to insurrection by his thefts and taxes to give you
wealth,” interrupted Bernice.
The older woman whirled on them with the fires of fury in her blind
eyes. “Peace to your sparrow chatter—fools—fools—fools! What do you
know of love, or constancy? You barter love and time for gain as
gamblers throw their dice. My Lord Herod and I bartered all for
love—and lost—and love as ever! And he is far among the savages of
Spain and I am caged here to wait the fortune of war at Jerusalem! And
time is short, and I grow old, and does his love grow cold? You read his
letter brought by the post this day, how he longs to hold me in his arms
once more! Nightly, I have prayed to Istarte and Venus and Astoreth for
my love to descend to him in far-off Spain down the beams of the
starlight, or moonlight, to hold him forever to me true! Instead of
answer to my prayers—what? This accursed Fort haunted by the spirits of
the dead! ’Twas here the spirit of Mariamne, whom Herod the Great
strangled, came haunting him till he went mad. ’Tis here where we are
shut up prisoners of the past, beating our weak women hands ’gainst the
fetters of fate, the ghosts of our past come haunting us! I tell you
fools that in the dark I can dream I am not blind, but when I pray for
my Lord’s love to come and wrap me in his arms, when it is dark and I
can forget I am blind—what comes? What comes? What comes? I say! I
could be a lioness to fight for my cubs, as all the Herod women ever
are; but when I pray for forgetfulness, what comes—I say?”
“Dear Aunt Herodias,” gently expostulated the younger Bernice. “These
are not wise words. Our weak hands only bruise when we batter fate.”
“Fool—your course is not yet run—dreaming of a blue-eyed slave, when
you should be in Jerusalem mending all our fortunes by marrying Titus,
the Emperor’s son!”
The two drew back from the violence of the elder woman standing in the
open-windowed turret.
“Herodias will be maniac unless we send her to her husband in Spain,”
whispered the sister Drusilla.
“Maniac,” repeated the blind woman in scorn. “So you would be, if
nightly when you prayed for love there came rolling over the stone floor
the bloody head of that wild Hermit beheaded in the cellar here. . . .
If I could tear these scales from my eyes and prove it is not true; but
can a blind lioness fight. . . .?”
“Let us go to the garden—we only anger her. She will rave to exhaustion
till she gets some sleep, and dreams she sees the head again,” murmured
Drusilla. “I could wish we were out of the haunted fortress here. It is
ill-fated! Do you go to Jerusalem and get the Emperor’s permission for
us to leave for Rome. . . .”
“I will do that, Sister Drusilla, but do not anger her by making light
of her mad love for Herod. No Herod woman dare grow afraid. Our past is
a black, back wall! Our future is blacker if Jerusalem falls and Judea
is ruled direct from Rome. Our brother Agrippa will be deposed. He is
last of our line. Everything hangs on winning Titus’ favor; and with the
road to Jericho blocked black by troops, it is easier to say ‘go to
Jerusalem’ than go! Unless a caravan comes this way from the East bound
for the Sea, which I can join disguised, how can we escape the Roman
guard set to watch the gates?”
They descended the stone stairs of the turret in thoughtful silence and
emerged in the great garden of the Fort. A broad walled parapet ran
round the edge of the sheer precipice on which the Fort was perched
above the cloudy Sea. Only one side gave exit, or approach—a narrow
causeway to the east with drop straight as a wall on either side,
leading out to the rose-tinted mountains of Moab, tier on tier above the
Desert dyed in a mystic fire of cloud and light.
An old Idumean guard sat in the shade under the arched gate to the
causeway. He took his helmet off and yawned drearily. His beard had
grizzled gray and his thatch of close-cropped curly hair had whitened
with age. As the two sisters approached walking along the wall of the
parapet and came under the shade of the arch, he rose stiffly and
saluted.
“How are the roads to Jerusalem, old Julius?” asked Drusilla, throwing
her purple silk cloak back over her shoulder so her bare arms shone
jeweled with bracelets.
“Blocked, blocked, Good Ladies,” returned the old Idumean wearily.
“Dreary task this, your Highness, guarding sibyls, who could bewitch all
Rome’s generals if they escaped down to Jerusalem.”
“What is the hammering we hear below the fog of clouds?” asked Bernice
trying to penetrate the import of his answer.
“Camel bells of some caravan coming up the causeway, or clanking of the
forges down at Jericho making war engines for the siege.”
“Are there many refugees in the caves between here and the Jordan,
Julius?” pressed Bernice.
“The Nazarenes are fleeing from Jerusalem to the Desert of Moab like
sheep harried by wolves; and robber bands are everywhere. I’ll warrant
those poor sheep will be fleeced of their wool before they reach the
caves of their Secret Lodges. Dangerous, Ladies, too dangerous for
princesses in royal robes to venture these roads when my head’s pledged
for their safety.”
“Why should a princess want to pass that way, old Julius?” smiled
Drusilla of the voluptuous lips.
“Because Titus, the Emperor’s son, is at the end of yon road.” He
pointed down the precipice path towards Jericho beyond the Jordan.
Drusilla laughed again. Bernice strolled through the arched gateway and
gazed past the rose-mist of light and clouds above the Desert mountains.
“Are there ghosts in the dungeons beneath the Fort, dear Julius?”
pressed Drusilla.
“None that I know but spears and swords to protect the women here if
Titus fail at Jerusalem,” answered the old Idumean, stretching his spear
across the open gate of the arch to the causeway across Princess
Bernice’s way.
The two Princesses turned and retraced their steps along the parapet.
The old Idumean sat down on the bench again with an evil smile that
showed all his yellow teeth like boar’s tusks.
“Witches! Enchantresses to turn men to swine! If I had my will, I’d
throw them all over the precipice into the Dead Sea.”
“You see, Drusilla! We are really prisoners at Rome’s orders, though
they pretend they are protecting us here,” said Bernice.
“What are prison walls to true love? Eat, drink and be merry; for
to-morrow we die,” laughed Drusilla. “Why are they holding us prisoners
here?”
“To grace Rome’s chariot wheels if they conquer Jerusalem,” Bernice
answered bitterly. “And if I go to Rome, I go not with chained hands
behind the chariots. I ride with Titus in the chariot under the
conquerors’ arch—”
“And I thank Jupiter,” insolently laughed Drusilla, “that my slave
husband Felix left enough gold to bribe freedom.”
They descended the stone steps from the parapet to the gardens. The
rose-and-silver mist still boiled above the green translucent depths of
the Dead Sea. It looked, so far below, a jewel in jade. An odor of roses
and oleander came from the sloping gardens. Far below they could see the
flat tiled roofs of the village outside the walls clinging to the
precipice like birds’ nests; and every roof was crowded with women and
children, to get the air.
“I hate women. If I had been a man, I would have been a warrior in the
thick of it at Jerusalem there,” said Drusilla. “Women are feeble and
helpless sheep. They either huddle in fright and go mad over the past
like Aunt Herodias up in the turret there, or—are eaten by the wolves.
If I knew where Felix camps among the barbarians, I’d throw my royal
estate to the winds and join him to-morrow.”
“I would not. I’d rule the wolf,” said Bernice thoughtfully.
Their purple silk cloaks brushed the snowy petals of the cyclamens
lining the garden paths. Bernice stooped and picked a field daisy.
“Heart of gold,” she said dreamily, “with vesture of white silk round
it, I’ll pluck your petals and—wish.” She plucked the white petals one
by one, throwing them on the ground.
“What does it say? Do you get your wish?” asked Drusilla.
Bernice’s fingers rested on the last slender white petal. She plucked it
and kissed it. “I get my wish,” she said.
The clank of an armed tread startled their daydream.
They turned. It was the old Idumean.
“Ladies, a camel caravan has just now come up the causeway from the
East. ’Twas their bells you heard! They ask permission to rest in our
khan during the heat of the day and go on to Jerusalem by night across
the Jordan.”
“Who are they?” demanded the Princess Drusilla imperiously.
“That was why I came to ask your permission, Princess! They are of the
new Christian band that gave such trouble to all the Herods. One is a
great figure of a man dressed in white with a flowing beard and train of
servants bound for the Isles of Greece. His name is Apollos. I saw him
in Rome, where he was held in honor, before Nero took the head of the
prophet, Paul! The other is a young presbyter, whatever that may be,
blue eyes, gold hair, who I could swear as slave served Paul in Rome.
His name has slipped my mind; but they came in great state with the
protection of Rome and ask lodgings in the Sun Temple till the heat of
day passes.”
“Onesimus,” exclaimed Bernice.
“Yes, as I mind now, Lady, that was his very name; but he has grown a
powerful man, fair as the angels of Gaul—but this Apollos as I
questioned him, seemed a follower of the mad Hermit, John Baptist,
’gainst whose ghost the Queen Herodias raves at night. If they did not
bear permission from Rome, I’d bid them pack to save trouble; but—” the
old Idumean scratched his thatch of whitening hair.
Drusilla laughed insolently.
“Bid them take quarters in the Temple of the Sun but avoid the Palace
here! Excuse us! Explain the Queen’s illness prevents our receiving them
with becoming honor! Send down the best of provisions and bid them enjoy
the full freedom of garden and baths after their journey. Begone—” she
peremptorily clapped her hands.
Drusilla turned with a cynical laugh to her sister.
“You get your wish, Sister! You can join their caravan and go to
Jerusalem and plead our case with Titus; but this must be kept from Aunt
Herodias. If this Apollos be a follower of the raving Hermit, John,
whose bloody head she sees every night in her dreams, she’ll be for a
potion of poison on him and ditch our plans deeper than the moat beneath
the walls. I’ll take care of the older man in the flowing white, ’spite
of his beard, if you’ll beguile the young one with the golden locks. Now
to the Temple of the Sun to make offerings to Istarte and Venus and
Astoreth and all the goddesses of love under the Evening Star! Herodias
cannot be moved while this madness is on her; but we can escape. You get
your wish, Sister.”
But Bernice had turned white as the cyclamen of snow which brushed the
royal purple of her silk vesture.
“Yes,” she repeated. “I get my wish! A curse upon it! Must Herod’s
daughters always, always be pawns in Rome’s royal game?”
“What matter, if we are winning pawns?” smiled the other. “Cheer up,
Sister! Throw away regret! Cast off fear! We can escape. Herodias has
lived her life and won, and lost, and sits like an old fool drooling
over her loss; but we are young yet! Let us eat, drink and be merry; for
to-morrow we die.”
“You said, yourself, but a moment ago, you thanked Jupiter your slave
husband Felix was the only one who had left a Herod daughter safe—”
Drusilla, like her aunt earlier in the afternoon, whirled upon her
sister. Laughter had left only craft in the deep black eyes, and on the
cruel voluptuous lips.
“Fool,” she said with a stab of scorn. “Do you hesitate because
Onesimus, your slave boy, has come back grown to man? Will your lure be
weaker, or stronger, now that he is grown with the strong wine of
manhood in his veins? If you, a Herod’s daughter, could hesitate now,
I’d stab you with my own hand the first time I found you asleep. Go to
Jerusalem! Win Titus! He will be Emperor, too, in time. Onesimus can
meet you in Rome. Bend fate to your will! Do not be bent and broken by
any fate. We go to the Temple gardens to-night.”
The old Idumean went clanking back to the gate under the arch,
stiff-legged as legs are wont to walk, that have been in armored greaves
for seventy years.
“A curse on this Herod brood,” he went, muttering. “These women have
thrown every Herod from his throne. If I had my will, I’d weight their
feet with stones and throw them over the precipice in the Dead Sea; and
I’d see these Nazarenes feed the lions as they fed the wild beasts in
Nero’s days. Disturbers! Disturbers! Trouble makers! Pilate, a suicide
stabbed by his own dagger! Procla, his wife, whining about the
crucifixion and bad dreams! Herod First a madman. Herod Two an exile
with his wife raving here over the Hermit’s bloody head! I’d like to
know didn’t she order his head off at one blow in this very Fort! Herod
Three falls dead in the theater of Cæsarea and his jade of a girl wife
here up to fresh tricks on Titus! Pah! A nice task for an old soldier
keeping guard of such harpies! I’d slash their lily-stem throats if I
had my way.”
* * * * *
The sun went down behind the rose-tinted mountains of Judea to the west.
Their peaks gleamed in blood and fire above the red and golden sands.
Bernice sat on an ivory bench in the gardens above the silver clouds
lying on the Dead Sea below. In her hand was a bunch of snowy cyclamens,
which she idly plucked. Before her stood the young presbyter, Onesimus,
clad like his master in flowing white, with black sandal straps braided
halfway to the knee, a sword hanging by a gold cord from his neck, his
hair as gold as the cord but cut short to the neck after the Greek
fashion, his deep blue eyes gazing at the Princess as he would read her
soul. Onesimus had grown to powerful manhood in these seven years since
he left Paul at Rome.
She sat silent, thinking, but what she thought, he could not follow.
There was a fifing of insects from the dry grasses, that bordered the
garden walks. As the sun set over the blue green lake and the orange
hills beyond, the clamor of war from the cañon below dulled and fell
like the subsiding waves of an angry sea. She turned her seal ring round
and round, and drew it from her finger as if to pass it to him. She
pressed it to her lips.
“Will this be amulet to keep you from all harm?” she mused.
The young presbyter trembled.
“My Unseen King will keep me from all harm,” he answered; “and I dare
not wear it till we are united for His Kingdom.”
“Look,” she said, “the Evening Star—Isis. The dewdrops are her tears.”
“’Twas the Star brought the Wise Men of the East,” he answered, “and
there shall be no more tears in His Kingdom.”
An awful loneliness and an awful loveliness seemed to envelop her
fragile form.
The young presbyter drew towards her as if to wrest her from her Dead
Sea hopes and take her to that Unseen Kingdom with violent hands.
“Where have you been with the great Apollos, these long long years, my
Onesimus?” she dreamily asked.
“To Babylonia and Assyria aiding the greatest apostle of all—Peter,” he
answered.
“He, who lied and denied his leader and cut the High Priest’s servant’s
ear off at the trial long years ago, as I have heard the Queen Herodias
tell?” she asked.
“Say rather, Princess, he who learned in sin his own weakness, and whose
great heart grew tender for all who fall in slippery places. He learned
not to trust his own strength even in love, but—God’s.”
She pondered that absently plucking the cyclamens; and her hands were
slender as the lily stems. The silver clouds rolled from below and the
translucent water lay a painted sea.
“What does your Master Apollos teach? How differs he from the others?”
“I’ll answer that as Paul answered years ago in Rome, when Ephesus and
Corinth wrote to know whether they should follow Paul, or Apollos. Paul
followed the Nazarene. Apollos professed John, the Baptist; and when the
followers would have wrangled one against another, and so missed the
news of the Glad Kingdom in strife, Paul wrote back—’twas but a few
years before Nero slew him—Paul plants; Apollos waters; God gives the
increase!”
“You speak as a gardener.”
“I am, dear Princess— We are all gardeners, gardeners in the field of
flowers which the Persians call ‘Ardath’—the Garden of God called
Paradise.”
“I like that. I can understand that better than an Unknown Kingdom not
made with hands! That Garden kind of Kingdom would be Glad News to me,
Onesimus! I could wander through that kind of Garden, forever, if I had
hold of your hand! Sit at my feet, dear playmate of the long ago, and
tell me of your Garden—no, sit by my side, I would hold your hand now!”
She drew him down to the ivory bench beside her. He flushed as deep as
the rose-tinted mountains in the setting sun.
“Now tell me of your Garden called Paradise, while I can feel your
thoughts flowing into mine through the palm of your hand. This is
Paradise enough for me.”
“Your hand, dear Princess, throbs too hard for the peace of that Garden.
It is a Garden where there is eternal light, nor suffering, nor care,
nor sorrow, nor dark, nor sleep to miss one hour of joy.”
“That, too, I like,” she said. “Let us not miss this hour of joy.”
“It is watered by the Rivers of Eternal Life. God’s thoughts are the
seeds. They bloom in human flowers. ’Tis ours to keep those human
flowers from running into poisonous weeds. The flowers of this your
earthly garden are fixed by roots, where they are planted, but the human
thought seeds have power of choice like wings to bear them where they
will to go; and I would that you would will to join our Unseen Garden,
not made with hands but thoughts—”
She drew his hand between her breasts and drank his eager gaze like one
athirst.
“See yonder above the Sea is Istarte, the Evening Star of love,
Onesimus! Will love dwell in our garden there as it shone in the Garden
of Daphne long ago, when first I read your dear blue eyes?”
“The God of Love is the Sun of that Garden, Princess,” he answered,
gently loosening her passionate grasp and placing in her emptied palm
the cyclamens she had let fall. “You bade me tell you of that Garden and
Apollos’ teaching. You know how the caves and grottos of the Jordan from
the Dead Sea to Damascus are filled with the Nazarenes, who have fled
from the siege of Jerusalem, which our Lord foretold. In all the cities
of Decapolis, Apollos preached in the Temples of the Sun. You know these
cities of the Greeks love and worship the Sun; but it was the Son of
God, Apollos preached, which John the Hermit foretold; and so when the
priests had sung the psalms, Apollos would sound out in his great
thunder voice like a silver trumpet: ‘Lift up your heads, oh, ye gates,
and let the King of Glory in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of
angel hosts, He is your King of Glory’; and when the multitude had
settled to listen, he would tell them of Ardath, the Garden of God in
Paradise, where God’s thoughts are seeds and bloom in human flowers.
Once, I mind, when a woman came weeping whose child had been slain in
the siege as she escaped, after she heard Apollos she left the Temple
rejoicing because her child had become a flower of light in the Garden
of God; and a lover, whose bride had been slain, went out, weeping no
more, because his bride was not dead, but waiting him in the Garden of
God; and a soldier mad with remorse that his cruelty had killed his wife
left all calmed because he had faith she, too, had gone to the Garden
and had sent him Apollos to teach the way.”
Bernice plucked the snowy cyclamens again from their stems. Her slim
hand trembled.
“Show me the way, Onesimus.”
Her voice was so low he had to bend across her slender figure to catch
the words.
“There is no other way but to repent, be baptized, leave off sin and
follow the Light of the Eternal Son.”
So absorbed were the lovers they did not see the tall white figure of
the great teacher Apollos approaching on the path, accompanied by the
Princess Drusilla.
“What is—this thing you call sin, my Onesimus? Is it sin for me to love
you as I do?”
“Sin is the shadow of self, shutting out the light of God.”
She pondered that. “And when I love you so you turn all life to rosy
mist, do I love self?” she asked.
“Sin is anything that holds us in the realm of shadows, away from God.
It may be crime that fetters us in blind dungeons without bars like the
Queen Herodias up there in the turret. It may be gayety. It may be
wealth. It may be fear. It may be love of flesh, or power. It may be
anxious want. It may be doubt; but it is always shadow of self.”
“And what is repentance? Would it cut me off from you?”
“No, but it would cut you off from planning to gain power by snaring the
Roman General yonder. Repentance is to cancel sin by sinning no more,
forsaking self and following Light.”
She threw her bare arms about his shoulder. “But if I gained Titus, the
Emperor’s son, I could have you too, Onesimus! You offer me a Shadow
Kingdom I cannot see or touch with hands. I aim at Rome.”
“You aim, beloved, at the image of clay and iron seen by the Prophet
Daniel; and even now the iron is falling from the clay and the image is
crumbling down. The other Kingdom is of gold and light and
eternity. . . .”
Two shadows fell athwart where they sat, and the Princess Bernice drew
back, while the young presbyter rose. Unutterable pain was on his
baffled face. Apollos in his flowing white garments cast a long giant
shadow between them. His back was towards the bench and so was the
figure of the Princess Drusilla. The towering Apostle with the white
hair and white beard had raised his shepherd’s crook and was pointing to
the rose-tinted peaks swimming in mystic fire of clouds and light; and
as he pointed his upraised staff and arms cast a shadow of the cross
between the young presbyter and the slim daughter of the last of the
Herods.
“Yonder,” he was saying in a voice so like a silver trumpet that
traditions have come in Crete to this day that when he spoke all the
silver bells of the temple service rang, “Yonder are the mountains of
the wilderness, where our Christ was tempted. First, He was tempted to
satisfy the hungry cravings of wearied and faint flesh. Then, He was
tempted to try out whether God was God enough to save Him from rash
slips; and then he was offered all the kingdoms of the earth and their
pageantry as in a dream. . . .”
“And why didn’t He accept the challenge as a Roman would?” asked the
Princess Drusilla in a cold, hard, calculating voice. “If He could have
proved His Kingdom instead of going to the Cross like a felon, I’ve
heard the Queen Herodias say all Judea would have risen and rallied to
Him and thrown off Rome. . . .”
“Because the power given Him of God was not for service of self, but to
lead men back to God. We may not make playthings of miracles for self,”
he said.
“So if the Queen Herodias will not acknowledge your God, you cannot cure
her madness?” demanded Drusilla.
“Remorse is not repentance,” answered the Sage; and the two figures
passed on down through the oleanders of the garden.
The rose-tinted misty mountains were wrapping them in shadow mantles of
purpling folds. A cold wind blew up from the waters, still and glassy as
a painted sea.
The young presbyter stood silent. Bernice shivered.
“How can you believe in your Unseen Kingdom, when your King was
crucified, and his followers are now scattered from Judea to these
caves?” she urged.
“Death is but a boat across another sullen Jordan to the Gardens of
God,” he said, “and His Followers are scattered that they may scatter
the seed for the Garden to spread here on earth. Already the scattered
seed reaches from Rome to Ganges.”
“Where does Apollos go now?” she asked.
“To become preacher in Crete.”
“And you?”
“To join John, beloved of Christ, at Ephesus.”
“And you leave?”
“In an hour to travel in the cool of the night.”
Far north, they could see to the snowy peaks of Hermon, where the sheet
lightning played. The clanking of forges plied in the valley below on
engines of war for the siege of Jerusalem, echoed like silver bells from
cavern and grotto. The pungent flower-drugged air had odor of temple
incense, and the breeze was as a cool hand laid on a fevered brow. The
shadows etched themselves clearer in the translucent depths of the
emerald Sea. The young presbyter’s lips were moving as in prayer.
Princess Bernice roused herself as if to throw off dreams.
“’Tis not I who tempt you, Onesimus, with flesh, or daring, or power.
’Tis you, who tempt me to abandon the last of the Herod line for a
shadow Kingdom. My brother, King Agrippa, the last of the Herods, is
with Titus besieging the rebellious Zealots of Jerusalem. I’ll get my
bodyguard, Julius, and join your caravan, and go with you.”
The young man’s face lighted up as a brow in sunrise.
* * * * *
Out under the arched gate they rode in the moon’s silvered dark, Apollos
in a litter on a camel, leading down the narrow precipitous causeway.
The Princess Bernice, too, rode a camel, but her form was swathed in
cloak; and the old Idumean rode before her on Arab horse, while the
young presbyter walked by her side. He carried his sword in his hand.
Down the narrow bridle path from the causeway led the road to the Jordan
and Jericho and Jerusalem, scarce broad enough for the beasts, steep and
winding as a circular stair. Once where the way narrowed so that those
on stirrups had to dismount and only the camels kept sure footing, the
Idumean dismounted and held back to give right of way to the Princess’
beast, before he turned his own horse and the young presbyter’s free to
let themselves down on their haunches.
“Well rid of her! Well rid of her!” grumbled the old man. “If she had
not been going off with you, I would not have let her go. Have you no
other Nazarene teachers can rid me of the other two? Had she attempted
to escape to Titus, the General’s son, I would have cut her throat.”
Down, down, the narrow winding way, the caravan descended, and where the
hot brooding malarial air of the Jordan smote them, the pebbly shaly
path turned to clay trampled to mire by the refugees fleeing the siege
for open desert and rocky cave. The current was dark and sullen and
flowed with the hurrying rage of human passion driving to the nemesis of
its own destiny. The heat was hideous and the din deafened thought.
At the ford of the sullen dark river, they paused to water their beasts,
and mounting his horse, the young presbyter rode abreast the Princess’
camel and signaled the Idumean to ride for her safety on the other side.
“So would I ride with you through the Gates of Death, my Princess,” he
whispered, leaning towards the white face in the muffled cloak. “’Twas
here Christ was baptized and tempted of Self and the Evil One, and
renounced all earthly power to save men for the Glad Kingdom. You, too,
another time in safer place shall join our ranks by the sacred rite of
baptism, my Bernice.”
But the white face answered never a word. She reached out her arm, where
she sat, and touched his brow with a hand cold as death. Then the
caravan plunged in the ford. The horses swam and scattered slightly,
heading downstream with the waves, but the camels kept footing and
floundered. As the beasts came panting up the far bank in a thicket of
willows and oleanders, the Idumean led to force the way, for the narrow
road past Jericho was packed with a slow-moving mass of fleeing women
and children and aged, escaping from the siege of the Holy City on Zion
Hill.
Apollos, the great master, rode back abreast the Princess, and the
presbyter, Onesimus, led her camel afoot.
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, know that the
desolation thereof is nigh,” Apollos said. “Let them which are in Judea
flee to the mountains. They shall fall by the edge of the sword. They
shall be led away captive into all nations. Jerusalem shall be trodden
down of the Gentiles. When these things begin to come, then look up, and
lift up your heads; for redemption draweth nigh. Know you Who spoke
those words, your Highness?”
But the Princess answered never a word; for her heart was cold with fear
of the sights she saw as in a shadow by the silver starlight. Where
Herod’s Pleasure Gardens had lain at Jericho, was such a press of
soldiers, they could not approach the city gates. The clank of the
forges for the engines of war had become as the rumble of thunder or
earthquake. Where she knew the Holy City must stand on Zion Hill, she
could discern only the blaze of towers and uptossing in midsky of
flaming javelin and torch to throw destruction inside the city walls;
and as the caravan advanced through the press of legion and cohort in
serried ranks of helmet and breastplate and spear, the narrow ascending
mountain road lay thick in a screen of smoke with a sickening odor of
burning she had not known could exist outside the purlieus of a nether
world.
The old Idumean came back and wheeled his horse beside her.
“We cannot get through the press though I break the pate of every head
under helmet,” he said. “We shall have to fork to the right for the
Damascus Road past the General’s tent.”
“What is the smell of burning?” she asked, leaning forward from the
muffle of her camel.
“The dead! They are burning the dead as they throw them out over the
walls in Gehenna Valley,” answered the old soldier; “and this road is
swimming in blood coming down the walls. The soldiers tell me it is
swimming in blood to the horses’ bridles beneath Olivet.”
“Fear nought, Princess,” called the young presbyter, remounting his
horse to guard the rear, “you are only escaping a world that plays all
men false”, and they pressed on, taking the road that forked north of
the city.
Daylight dim with fog and smoke and the dust of battle saw them on the
crest of the highway that led north from the Holy City towards either
Cæsarea on the Sea, or Damascus in the far snowy mountains.
They paused again to breathe their spent camels and horses.
Bernice signaled the young presbyter.
“I would have your Arab horse,” she said. “I cannot ride this beast. He
is spent.”
Onesimus helped her to dismount the panting camel and take place on his
own horse, fresh because he had ridden little. He felt the tremor of her
slender form as he helped her to saddle. Far as eye could see were tents
on the heights and plains: but the Holy City they could not see for the
fog of smoke and dust and mist.
One great yellow tent spacious enough to house a thousand men lay not a
hundred yards to the left of their road. Above it blew the eagle
pennants of Rome.
“On,” shouted the old Idumean, “we are safe here. That is the General’s
tent. They have paused because this is the Jewish Sabbath and they
parley for surrender. To-day will see their Holy City fall and ring to
our trumpets’ victory.”
The caravan moved slowly forward. Soldiers rose sleepily where they lay
on the ground and saluted the old Idumean. The camels moved through the
mist in grotesque ghosts. Myriad tents were myriad island peaks in the
lifting morning mist. Then the sun outburst over the rose-tinted
mountains of Moab in the east; and the trumpets blew in a million echoes
through glen and grotto.
Mountains and plains seemed to awaken with myriad soldier forms from
ground and tent. Their metal helmets gave back the morning light in
silvered fire. As the trumpets blew their silvery blasts amid the
echoing rocks, the young presbyter’s horse reared in panic terror. The
Idumean and the young presbyter sprang to snatch at the bridle. The
Princess threw out her arm and struck the trembling creature a blow on
its flank with the bridle rein. It bounded in mid-air and fled as on
winged feet straight for the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
The old Idumean came a-sprawl on the ground, rolled over and sprang up
with his helmet awry. The astounded young presbyter had retained his
seat on the wearied camel, but gazed after the fleeing form as one who
has received his death blow.
“A curse upon her and all her vixen foxy Herod brood,” raged the old
man, getting stiffly to his feet. “I might have known it was a trick
when she said she would go to the Grecian Isles with you.”
The caravan moved forward again. The old Idumean was galloping furious
as his Arab horse could leap in wild bounds towards the General’s tent.
Just as the sunlight burst in a shield of fire over the embattled hosts,
the young presbyter looked back.
The old Idumean had thrown himself from his horse and stood with drawn
lance across the door to the tent of the sleeping Roman General.
“And because Peter erred through love in a slippery place, it gave his
great heart tenderness for all who trust in flesh,” said Apollos. Then
he smiled gently at his young presbyter. “The old Idumean is closer to
truth though he fell hard and cursed as Peter, than this Princess,
blinder in the fetters of her own wiles than the Queen Herodias,
prisoner back in the Fort,” he said. “We all have to learn by errors,
Onesimus, but it makes the way longer; and he who follows truth by a
circling road, comes out where he began.”