Saul Of Tarsus Part 7

"Without the pa.s.sword, comrade," he panted. "Call the officer of the guard. And by our common quarrels in Rome do thou haste, for if I see not Vitellius and Herrenius Capito this instant I expire!"

The cry of the sentry pa.s.sed from post to post until the centurion of the guard emerged from a small gate.

"One cometh without the countersign," the sentry said.

"A visitor for Vitellius and Herrenius Capito," the bankrupt explained.

"The general and his guest have retired," was the blunt reply.

"Hip! but thou art the same glib liar thou always wast, Aulus," the bankrupt laughed. "Take me into the light, and slap me with thy sword if I am frank beyond the privileges of mine acquaintance with thee!"

The gate-keeper, in response to a short word from the dubious Aulus, let down the chains with a rattle and a small side portal swung in, revealing an interior of semi-dusk.

The centurion conducted his visitor within. Torches stuck in sconces high up in the walls lighted a quadrangle of tessellated pavement, terminating distantly in banks of marble stairs of such breadth and stature that their limits were lost in the unilluminated night.

After a quick glance, the centurion started and slapped his helmet in salute to the bankrupt. The other responded with a skill and grace that could not have been a.s.sumed for the moment. The dexterity of the camp was written in the movement.

"I am expected of Capito," the bankrupt said, which was true only in a very limited sense.

"I know, and do thou follow. Thou shalt see him. Were he dead and inurned he would arise to thee."

The man in scarlet smiled a little grimly and followed his conductor out of the light up the marble heights of stairs duly set with sentinels, to a porch that even the Royal Colonnade of the Temple could not shame. A huge cresset with a jeweled hood, depending from a groining so high that its light was feeble, showed dimly the giant compound arch of the portal. An orderly, a veritable pygmy within the outline of the dark entrance, appeared and saluted.

"A visitor for the proconsul and his guest," the centurion said, pa.s.sing the man in scarlet to the orderly.

He was led through a valve groaning on its granite hinges into the vestibule of Herod the Great's palace.

It was a lofty hall, n.o.bly vaulted, lined with costly Indian onyx and florid with pagan friezes, arabesques and frescoes. Yet, though its jeweled lamps were dark and cold, its fountains still, its hangings and its carpets gone, its b.l.o.o.d.y genius held despotic sway from a shadowy throne, over the note of brute force which the Roman garrison had infused into it.

At the far end was a small carven table at which two Romans sat, a lamp and a crater of wine at their elbows, the tesserae of a dice-game between them.

Without waiting for the orderly to speak, the man in scarlet stepped forward.

"Greeting, Vitellius. Capito, I salute you," he said. His voice was that of a composed man speaking with equals.

Vitellius turned his head toward the speaker; Capito drew up his lids and his lower jaw relaxed. Slowly then both men got upon their feet.

"By the bats of Hades--" Vitellius began.

"By the nymphs of Delphi!" Capito's aged falsetto broke in. "It is the Herod himself!"

"Herod Agrippa!" Vitellius exclaimed.

"From the faces of you," Agrippa declared, "I might have been the shade of my grandsire. But I have been hunting you. I need help. And as thou hopest to return three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar from my purse, do thou aid me in urging Vitellius to yield it, Capito."

"Help," Capito repeated.

"What manner of help?" Vitellius demanded, fixing Agrippa with a suspicious eye.

"Arrest me an Essene from the hands of Jonathan."

"Jonathan!" the proconsul exclaimed darkly.

"The High Priest, the Nasi, thy sweet and valued friend!" the Agrippa explained with amiable provoke. "He has arrested an Essene on a trifling charge of apostasy and he is my voucher before the Essenic brotherhood for a loan to repay Caesar. I left him in the hands of the Shoterim, in Bezetha. If he be not speedily rescued, they will stone him without the walls to-morrow and my debt to Caesar--" he drew up his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture highly Jewish.

Capito frowned and Vitellius glowered under his grizzled brow at Agrippa.

"It is one to me," Agrippa continued coolly, as he noted signs of dissent in the contemplation. "I am just as happy and as like to escape Caesar's displeasure by failing to pay it, as thou wilt be, Capito, if thou failest to collect it."

Capito nervously fingered the tesserae at his hand.

"Meanwhile," added the Herod, perching himself on the edge of the table, "the youth proceeds to Jonathan's stronghold."

Vitellius looked at Caesar's debt-collector. "Dost thou see anything more in this than appears on the face of it?" he asked.

Capito scratched his white head. He had learned to look for ulterior motives in every move of this slippery Herod, but he was too little informed in the matter to see more than the surface.

"We--can look into it, first," he opined.

"Jonathan will not await your pleasure," Agrippa put in. "He is hurried now with the responsibility of executing enough blasphemers to save himself popular favor. The Sanhedrim may sit to-morrow, the prisoner come for trial and be executed--even more expeditiously because the Nasi expects thee to interfere, Vitellius."

The proconsul bit through an expletive. Jonathan was a thorn in his side.

"What is it you wish me to do?" he demanded.

"Arrest me this youth. The claim of the proconsul's charge will take precedence over the hieratic."

"But he has not offended--"

"Save the protest; he has; he struck me, a Roman citizen. But draw up the warrant, good Vitellius, and send a centurion after the young man.

Thou canst make no error by so doing and thou canst save Capito the favor of his emperor."

Vitellius summoned a clerk and while the warrant for Marsyas' arrest was written, despatched an orderly for an officer. One of the contubernalis to Vitellius, or one of the sons of a n.o.ble family serving his apprenticeship in warfare, appeared.

"Take four," Vitellius said grimly, in compliance with Herod's demand, when the young centurion approached, "and go with this man. Arrest by superior claim the High Priest's prisoner, who shall be pointed out.

Fetch him and this man back to me!"

The young centurion saluted and Agrippa a.s.sented with a nod.

"Thanks," he added nonchalantly. "Come, brother," he said to the young officer, "if we be late it may take the whole machinery of Rome to undo the work of Jonathan."

Agrippa and the Roman legionaries pa.s.sed out of the Praetorium and turned directly up the slanting street toward the palace of Jonathan, which stood a little above the camp.

The Herod had lost little time and the progress of the arresting party toward the stronghold would not have been rapid with the resistance of Marsyas and the friends of the Nazarenes to r.e.t.a.r.d the movement. After a quick walk of a short distance, the Roman group came upon the Temple's emissaries, entering from an intersecting street.

Saul and Joel walked a little ahead of the broken-spirited prisoners who were centered in a group of armed lictors and a hooting escort of half a hundred vagrants. The flaring torch-light shone down on bowed heads and disordered garments, and showed fugitive glints of manacles and knives.

Among them, unbroken and silent, was Marsyas, heavily shackled. He was marked with blows, but several besides the Levite Joel staggered as they walked, and Agrippa, lifting himself on tiptoe to point out his prisoner to the centurion, eyed the young man with approval.