Pearl-Maiden Part 36

"Now daughter," he said, "we have done all that can be done, and must leave the rest to fate."

"Yes," she answered with a sigh, "we must leave the rest to fate, as you Romans call G.o.d."

In the evening they set sail for Italy, and with them much of the captured treasure, many sick and wounded men and a guard of soldiers. As it chanced, having taken the sea after the autumn gales and before those of mid-winter began, they had a swift and prosperous voyage, enduring no hardships save once from want of water. Within thirty days they came to Rhegium, whence they marched overland to Rome, being received everywhere very gladly by people who were eager for tidings of the war.

CHAPTER XX

THE MERCHANT DEMETRIUS

When on that fateful night in the Old Tower Miriam sprang forward to strike the lantern from the hand of the Jew, Nehushta, who was bending over the fallen Marcus and dragging at his body, did not even see that she had left the door.

With an effort, the slope of the rocky pa.s.sage beyond favouring her, she half-drew, half-lifted the Roman through the entrance. Then it was, as she straightened herself a little to take breath, that she heard the thud of the rock door closing behind her. Still, as it was dark, she did not guess that Miriam was parted from them, for she said:

"Ah! into what troubles do not these men lead us poor women. Well, just in time, and I think that none of them saw us."

There was no answer. Sound could not pierce that wall and the place was silent as a tomb.

"Lady! In the Name of Christ, where are you, lady?" asked Nehushta in a piercing whisper, and the echoes of the gallery answered--"Where are you, lady?"

Just then Marcus awoke.

"What has chanced? What place is this, Miriam?" he asked.

"This has chanced," answered Nehushta in the same awful voice. "We are in the pa.s.sage leading to the vaults; Miriam is in the hands of the Jews in the Old Tower, and the door is shut between us. Accursed Roman! to save your life she has sacrificed herself. Without doubt she sprang from the door to dash the lantern from the hand of the Jew, and before she could return again it had swung home. Now they will crucify her because she rescued you--a Roman."

"Don't talk, woman," broke in Marcus savagely, "open the door. I am still a man, I can still fight, or," he added with a groan, remembering that he had no sword, "at the least I can die for her."

"I cannot," gasped Nehushta. "She had the iron that lifts the secret latch. If you had kept your sword, Roman, it might perhaps have served, but that has gone also."

"Break it down," said Marcus. "Come, I will help."

"Yes, yes, Roman, you will help to break down three feet of solid stone."

Then began that hideous scene whereof something has been said. Nehushta strove to reach the latch with her fingers. Marcus, standing upon one foot, strove to shake the stone with his shoulder, the black, silent stone that never so much as stirred. Yet they worked madly, their breath coming in great gasps, knowing that the work was in vain, and that even if they could open the door, by now it would be to find Miriam gone, or at the best to be taken themselves. Suddenly Marcus ceased from his labour.

"Lost!" he moaned, "and for my sake. O ye G.o.ds! for my sake." Then down he fell, his harness clattering on the rocky step, and lay there, muttering and laughing foolishly.

Nehushta ceased also, gasping: "The Lord help you, Miriam, for I cannot.

Oh! after all these years to lose you thus, and because of that man!"

and she glared through the darkness towards the fallen Marcus, thinking in her heart that she would kill him.

"Nay," she said to herself, "she loved him, and did she know it might pain her. Better kill myself; yes, and if I were sure that she is dead this, sin or no sin, I would do."

As she sat thus, helpless, hopeless, she saw a light coming up the stair towards them. It was borne by Ithiel. Nehushta rose and faced him.

"Praise be to G.o.d! there you are at length," he said. "Thrice have I been up this stair wondering why Miriam did not come."

"Brother Ithiel," answered Nehushta, "Miriam will come no more; she is gone, leaving us in exchange this man Marcus, the Roman prefect of Horse."

"What do you mean? What do you mean?" he gasped. "Where is Miriam?"

"In the hands of the Jews," she answered. Then she told him all that story.

"There is nothing to be done," he moaned when she had finished. "To open the door now would be but to reveal the secret of our hiding-place to the Jews or to the Romans, either of whom would put us to the sword, the Jews for food, the Romans because we are Jews. We can only leave her to G.o.d and protect ourselves."

"Had I my will," answered Nehushta, "I would leave myself to G.o.d and still strive to protect her. Yet you are right, seeing that many lives cannot be risked for the sake of one girl. But what of this man?"

"We will do our best for him," answered Ithiel, "for so she who sacrificed herself for his sake would have wished. Also years ago he was our guest and befriended us. Stay here a while and I will bring men to carry him to the vault."

So Ithiel went away to return with sundry of the brethren, who lifted Marcus and bore him down the stairs and pa.s.sages to that darksome chamber where Miriam had slept, while other brethren shut the trap-door, and loosened the roof of the pa.s.sage, blocking it with stone so that without great labour none could pa.s.s that path for ever.

Here in this silent, sunless vault for many, many days Marcus lay sick with a brain fever, of which, had it not been for the skilful nursing of Nehushta and of the leeches among the Essenes, he must certainly have died. But these leeches, who were very clever, doctored the deep sword-cut in his head, removing with little iron hooks the fragments of bone which pressed upon his brain, and dressing that wound and another in his knee with salves.

Meanwhile, they learned by their spies that both the Temple and Mount Sion had fallen. Also they heard of the trial of Miriam and of her exposure on the Gate Nicanor, but of what happened to her afterwards they could gather nothing. So they mourned her as dead.

Now, their food being at length exhausted and the watch of the Romans having relaxed, they determined, those who were left of them, for some had died and Ithiel himself was very ill, to attempt to escape from the hateful vaults that had sheltered them for all these months. A question arose as to what was to be done with Marcus, now but a shadow of a man, who still wandered somewhat in his mind, but who had pa.s.sed the worst of his sickness and seemed like to live. Some were for abandoning him; some for sending him back to the Romans; but Nehushta showed that it would be wise to keep him as a hostage, so that if they were attacked they might produce him and in return for their care, perhaps buy their lives. In the end they agreed upon this course, not so much for what they might gain by it, but because they knew that it would have pleased the lost maid whom they called their Queen, who had perished to save this man.

So it came about that upon a certain night of rain and storm, when none were stirring, a number of men with faces white as lepers, of the hue, indeed, of roots that have pushed in the dark, might have been seen travelling down the cavern quarries, now tenanted only by the corpses of those who had perished there from starvation, and so through the hole beneath the wall into the free air. With them went litters bearing their sick, and among the sick, Ithiel and Marcus. None hindered their flight, for the Romans had deserted this part of the ruined city and were encamped around the towers in the neighbourhood of Mount Sion, where some few Jews still held out.

Thus it happened that by morning they were well on the road to Jericho, which, always a desert country, was now quite devoid of life. On they went, living on roots and such little food as still remained to them, to Jericho itself, where they found nothing but a ruin haunted by a few starving wretches. Thence they travelled to their own village, to discover that, for the most part, this also had been burnt. But certain caverns in the hillside behind, which they used as store-houses, remained, and undiscovered in them a secret stock of corn and wine that gave them food.

Here, then, they camped and set to work to sow the fields which no Romans or robbers had been able to destroy, and so lived hardly, but unmolested, till at length the first harvest came and with it plenty.

In this dry and wholesome air Marcus recovered rapidly, who by nature was very strong. When first his wits returned to him he recognised Nehushta, and asked her what had chanced. She told him all she knew, and that she believed Miriam to be dead, tidings which caused him to fall into a deep melancholy. Meanwhile, the Essenes treated him with kindness, but let him understand that he was their prisoner. Nor if he had wished it, and they had given him leave to go, could he have left them at that time, seeing that the slightest of his hurts proved to be the worst, since the spear or sword-cut having penetrated to the joint and let out the oil, the wound in his knee would heal only by very slow degrees, and for many weeks left him so lame that he could not walk without a crutch. So here he sat by the banks of the Jordan, mourning the past and well-nigh hopeless for the future.

Thus in solitude, tended by Nehushta, who now had grown very grim and old, and by the poor remnant of the Essenes, Marcus pa.s.sed four or five miserable months. As he grew stronger he would limp down to the village where his hosts were engaged in rebuilding some of their dwellings, and sit in the garden of the house that was once occupied by Miriam. Now it was but an overgrown place, yet among the pomegranate bushes still stood that shed which she had used as a workshop, and in it, lying here and there as they had fallen, some of her unfinished marbles, among them one of himself which she began and cast aside before she executed that bust which Nero had named divine and set him to guard in the Temple at Rome.

To Marcus it was a sad place, haunted by a thousand memories, yet he loved it because those memories were all of Miriam.

t.i.tus, said rumour, having accomplished the utter destruction of Jerusalem, had moved his army to Caesarea or Berytus, where he pa.s.sed the winter season in celebrating games in the amphitheatres. These he made splendid by the slaughter of vast numbers of Jewish prisoners, who were forced to fight against each other, or, after the cruel Roman fashion, exposed to the attacks of ravenous wild beasts. But although he thought of doing so, Marcus had no means of communicating with t.i.tus, and was still too lame to attempt escape. Could he have found any, indeed, to make use of them might have brought destruction upon the Essenes, who had treated him kindly and saved his life. Also among the Romans it was a disgrace for a soldier, and especially for an officer of high rank, to be made prisoner, and he was loth to expose his own shame. As Gallus had told Miriam, no Roman should be taken alive. So Marcus attempted to do nothing, but waited, sick at heart, for whatever fate fortune might send him. Indeed, had he been quite sure that Miriam was dead, he, who was disgraced and a captive, would have slain himself and followed her. But although none doubted her death--except Nehushta--his spirit did not tell him that this was so. Thus it came about that Marcus lived on among the Essenes till his health and strength came back to him, as it was appointed that he should do until the time came for him to act. At length that time came.

When Samuel, the Essene, left Tyre, bearing the letter and the ring of Miriam, he journeyed to Jerusalem to find the Holy City but a heap of ruins, haunted by hyaenas and birds of prey that feasted on the innumerable dead. Still, faithful to his trust, he strove to discover that entrance to the caverns of which Miriam had told him, and to this end hovered day by day upon the north side of the city near to the old Damascus Gate. The hole he could not find, for there were thousands of stones behind which jackals had burrowed, and how was he to know which of these openings led to caverns, nor were there any left to direct him.

Still, Samuel searched and waited in the hope that one day an Essene might appear who would guide him to the hiding-place of the brethren.

But no Essene appeared, for the good reason that they had fled already.

In the end he was seized by a patrol of Roman soldiers who had observed him hovering about the place and questioned him very strictly as to his business. He replied that it was to gather herbs for food, whereon their officer said that they would find him food and with it some useful work. So they took him and pressed him into a gang of captives who were engaged in pulling down the walls, that Jerusalem might nevermore become a fortified city. In this gang he was forced to labour for over four months, receiving only his daily bread in payment, and with it many blows and hard words, until at last he found an opportunity to make his escape.

Now among his fellow-slaves was a man whose brother belonged to the Order of the Essenes, and from him he learned that they had gone back to Jordan. So thither Samuel started, having Miriam's ring still hidden safely about his person. Reaching the place without further accident he declared himself to the Essenes, who received him with joy, which was not to be wondered at, since he was able to tell them that Miriam, whom they named their Queen and believed to be dead, was still alive. He asked them if they had a Roman prisoner called Marcus hidden away among them, and when they answered that this was so, said that he had a message from Miriam which he was charged to deliver to him. Then they led him to the garden where her workshop had been, telling him that there he would find the Roman.

Marcus was seated in the garden, basking in the sunshine, and with him Nehushta. They were talking of Miriam--indeed, they spoke of little else.

"Alas! although I seem to know her yet alive, I fear that she must be dead," Marcus was saying. "It is not possible that she could have lived through that night of the burning of the Temple."

"It does not seem possible," answered Nehushta, "yet I believe that she did live--as in your heart you believe also. I do not think it was fated that any Christian should perish in that war, since it has been prophesied otherwise."

"Prove it to me, woman, and I should be inclined to become a Christian, but of prophecies and such vague talk I am weary."

"You will become a Christian when your heart is touched and not before,"