Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians

by Elizabeth Miller

  CHAPTER V

  AGRIPPA IN REPERTOIRE

  On the way two dark figures emerged from the shadows and halted to letthe soldiers pass. Agrippa peered at them intently through the gloom,and raising his arm made a peculiar gesture. Both figures approachedimmediately.

  "Do thou fetch my civilian's dress, Silas, to the gate of the Praetoriumto-morrow, early, and my umber toga broidered with silver. And thou,Eutychus, prepare our belongings so thou canst carry them and bringthem also that we may proceed at once to En-Gadi. I remain at thePraetorium to-night. Be gone and fail not!"

  The two men bowed and disappeared.

  When the party reentered the gates of the camp, Herod's vestibule wasdark. The prisoner and Agrippa were led to the barracks and turnedinto a cubiculum, or sleeping-chamber. One of the four was manacled toMarsyas and the bolts shot upon them.

  The soldier immediately stretched himself on the straw and, bidding theothers hold their peace, fell asleep promptly.

  After a long time, when the sounds from the pallet assured Agrippa thatthe soldier could not be easily aroused, he arose and came over to theside of the young Essene.

  The torch-light for the officer of the guard, flaring on the wallwithout, shone through the high ventilation niche in the cell and casta faint illumination over the dusky interior. Under the half-light theface of Marsyas looked fallen and lifeless,--his dark hair in disorderon his forehead, his shadowed eyes and slight black beard making forthe increase of pallor by contrast. Agrippa looked at him a momentbefore the young man had noticed his approach.

  "The medicine for thy hurts, young brother," he said to himself, "isonly one--the comforting arms of a woman. I have had experience; Iknow! But if thou art an Essene that comfort is denied thee. Now, Iwonder what demon-ridden Jew it was who first thought of an order ofcelibates!"

  He drew closer and the somber eyes of the young man lighted upon him.

  "So thou dost not sleep," Agrippa said in Hebrew. Marsyas' face showeda little surprise at the choice of tongue, but he answered in the samelanguage.

  "Why am I here?" he asked.

  "Better here than there," Agrippa responded under his breath,indicating the direction of Jonathan's stronghold.

  "Listen," he continued, "and may Morpheus plug this soldier's ears ifhe knows our fathers' ancient tongue. Canst see my face, brother?"

  Marsyas signed his assent.

  "Thou sayest thou art a Galilean," Agrippa pursued. "Look now and seeif thou discoverest aught familiar in me."

  Marsyas raised himself on an elbow and gazed into the Herod's face.Finally he said slowly:

  "I have seen thee in Tiberias--in power--as--as prefect! Thou artHerod Agrippa!"

  There was silence; the Essene's eyes filled with question and the Herodgave him time to think.

  "I had thee arrested," Agrippa resumed when he believed that Marsyas'ideas had reached the point of asking what the Herod had to do withhim. "To-morrow thou wilt be fined for striking me and turnedloose--to Jonathan--unless thou art helped to escape."

  "I understand," said Marsyas with growing light, but without enthusiasm.

  "Thou seest I am virtually a prisoner here. I became so, to save theefrom Jonathan."

  "For me! Thou becamest a prisoner to save me?" Marsyas repeated,astounded.

  "Because I need thee as much as thou needest me," was the frankadmission.

  "What can I do for thee that thou shouldst need me?" Marsyas askedsoftly, but still wondering.

  "Hast--hast thou ever lacked friends so wholly that thou wast willingto purchase one?" Agrippa asked.

  "I am thy grateful servant; yet I am an Essene, poor, persecuted,homeless, hungry and heartbroken. What wilt thou have of me?"

  In that was more earnestness than blandishment, more appeal thanoffering. The young man published his helplessness and asked after theother's use of him. Agrippa was silent; after a pause Marsyas put outhis hand and lifting the hem of the pagan tunic pressed it to his lips.The act could not fail to reach to the innermost of the Herod's heart.His head dropped suddenly into his hands, and the young Essene's touchrested lightly on his shoulder.

  Finally Agrippa raised his head.

  "Dost thou know my history, brother?" he asked.

  "From the lips of others, yes; but let me hear thee."

  "Thou art a just youth; nothing so outrages a slandered man as to penhis defense within his lips. Hear me, then. To be a Herod once meantto be beloved by the Caesars. In my early childhood, after the death ofmy young father, I was taken to Rome by my mother and reared amongprinces and the sons of consuls. Best of all my friends was Drusus,Caesar's gallant son, and we studied together, raced and gambled andfeasted together, loved and hated--and fought together, and never wasthere a difference between us except in purse!

  "While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire droveme out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and itstung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substanceperished.

  "When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship atPuteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesarand forty tradesmen barked about my heels.

  "I had a ruined castle in Idumea. I forgot that I owned it till I wasin actual want of shelter. Thither I went. But I was a young man,hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness ofage. I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess,prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion.

  "She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand andfoot. I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, andin a little time an answer came. It was from my brother-in-law, HerodAntipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee. Cypros had besought him to helpus. He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard toreconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be hisprefect over Tiberias. I went."

  The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if hisaccount were expurgated.

  "At Tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted mewith my poverty and boasted his charity. I tore off the prefect'sbadge and flung it in his face. And that same night I took the road toAntioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm.

  "The proconsul of Antioch took us in, but there was treachery againstme afoot in his household, and I lost his friendship through it. Hiswas my last refuge under roof of mine own rank. I heard recently thatAlexander Lysimachus, Alabarch of Alexandria, was in Jerusalem,presenting a Gate to the Temple, and sending my wife and children toPtolemais, I hastened hither to get a loan of him. But he had departedsome days before I came. So here am I as a player of dice to win memoney enough to take me back to Ptolemais. But Herrenius Capito,Caesar's debt-collector, hath found me out."

  He looked down at Marsyas' interested face.

  "Let me be truthful," he corrected. "I found him. I could have flownhim successfully, but for thy close straits. All that would save theewould be the interference of Rome, and I could command it at sacrifice."

  Public version of Agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phasesof his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiae had notbeen to Herod's credit. Yet, though Marsyas knew of these things, hisheart stirred with great pity. His was that large nature which turnsto the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited. It seemedto him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment. Butthe word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession inhis behalf, stirred him.

  "How shall I make back to thee thy effort in my behalf?" he askedearnestly. "Thou sayest that thou needest me; what can I do?"

  "First let me know of thyself."

  Marsyas relinquished his thought on Agrippa to turn painfully to hisown story.

  "I am Marsyas, son of Matthew, of Nazareth. He was a zealot who foughtbeside Judas of Galilee. I was born after his death, and at my birthmy mother died, and being the last of their line, I am, and have bee
nall my life alone. I was taken in mine infancy by the Essenic masterof the school in Nazareth and reared to be an Essene. But I developeda certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness forteaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward I was,designed me for the scholar-class of Essenes, which do not reside inEn-Gadi but without in the world. The vows of the order were not laidupon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years whenmy instruction should be completed."

  Agrippa frowned. "Art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" heasked.

  "No, I am a neophyte, a postulant."

  The Herod ran his fingers though his hair, and Marsyas went on.

  "I had two friends, both older than I. One was Saul of Tarsus; one,Stephen of Galilee. Neither knew the other. Stephen was born anHellenist, and until the coming of his Prophet, a good Jew. But whenJesus arose in Nazareth, Stephen followed Him, and, after the Nazarenewas put away, he remained here in Jerusalem. When I came hither tocomplete mine instruction in the college, I found the synagogue arousedagainst him.

  "Chief among the zealous in behalf of the Law is Saul of Tarsus. Him Imost feared, when the rumors of Stephen's apostasy spread abroad. Anevil messenger finally set Saul upon Stephen, and I pleaded with him tospare Stephen, until I could win him back to the faith. But Saul wouldnot hear me.

  "I meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and takeStephen into the refuge of En-Gadi--"

  He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.

  "But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get mypatrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned himbefore mine eyes!"

  Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story andhe ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.

  "And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha,mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs ofapostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the restof the narrative from surmise. Marsyas assented; it hurt him as muchto think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.

  "It was doubtless his intent."

  "Implacable enough to be Caesar! And thou art not a member of theEssenic order--only a neophyte. That is disconcerting. Hast thou anyinfluence with the brethren?"

  "None whatever."

  Perplexity sat dark on the Herod's brow. Marsyas, with his eyes on theprince's face, observed it.

  "Can I not help thee?" he asked anxiously.

  "I thought once that thou couldst; but thou sayest that thou hast nopower with the Essenes. Now, I do not know."

  "What is it thou wouldst have had me do?"

  "I have said that I owe three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar.Unless I discharge it, under the Roman law I can be required to becomethe slave of my creditor. That I might secure intercession in thybehalf, I had to promise Capito and Vitellius that thou couldst help meto repay this sum."

  "I!" Marsyas cried, sitting up.

  The legionary stirred and Agrippa laid a warning finger on his lip.The two sat silent until the sleeper fell again into totalunconsciousness.

  "Three hundred thousand drachmae!" Marsyas repeated. "I, to get that!"

  "I knew that the Essenic brotherhood have a common treasury and thatthey are believed to be rich. I thought that thou couldst persuadethem to lend me the sum."

  Marsyas shook his head. "They are poor, poor! Their fund is notcontributed in great bulk, and the little they own must be expended inhospitality and in maintaining themselves. Their treasury would beenriched by the little I bring."

  "O Fortune!" Agrippa groaned aloud. "I am undone and so art thou!"

  Marsyas lapsed into thought, while the Herod looked at the solid doorthat stood between him and liberty. He had set the subject aside asprofitless and was a little irritated when Marsyas spoke again.

  "What hopes hast thou in Alexandria?"

  "The alabarch, Alexander Lysimachus, is my friend. He is rich; I couldborrow of him."

  "Take thou my gold and go thither," Marsyas offered at once.

  "It is not so easy as it sounds, for the sound of it is most generousand kindly. How am I to get out of Capito's clutches, here?"

  Marsyas gazed straight at Agrippa with the set eyes of one plunged intodeep speculation. Then he leaned toward the prince.

  "Will this gold in all truth help thee to borrow more in Alexandria?"

  "I know it!"

  "And then what?"

  "To Rome! To imperial favor! To suzerainty over Judea!"

  Marsyas laid hold on the prince's arm.

  "Thou art a Herod," he said intensely. "Ambition natively should bethe very breath of thy nostrils. Yet swear to me that thou wiltaspire--aye, even desperately as thy grandsire! Swear to me that thouwilt not be content to be less than a king!"

  At another time, Agrippa might have found amusement in the young man'searnestness, but the cause was now his own.

  "Thou tongue of my desires!" he exclaimed. "I have sworn! Being aHerod, mine oaths are not idle. I have sworn!"

  "Then, let us bargain together," Marsyas said rapidly. "I have toldthee my story: thou heardest my vow to-night! For my fealty, yield methy word! As I help thee into power, help me to revenge! Promise!"

  "Promise! By the beard of Abraham, I will conquer or kill anythingthou markest; yield thee my last crust, and carry thee upon my back, sothou help me to Alexandria!"

  "Swear it!"

  Agrippa raised his right hand and swore.

  The legionary roused and growled at the two to be quiet. Marsyas fellback on the straw and lay still. Agrippa made signs and urged for morediscussion, but the Essene, masterful in his silence, refused to speak.Presently the Herod lay down and slept from sheer inability to engagehis mind to profit otherwise.

  A little after dawn the following morning, the Essene and the Herodwere conducted into the vestibule of Herod the Great, for a hearingbefore Vitellius and Herrenius Capito. But Marsyas' offense against aRoman citizen was held in abeyance; it was Agrippa's debt to Caesarwhich engaged the attention of the judges.

  Vitellius was in a precarious temper and Capito looked as grim asquerulous old age may. Agrippa's nonchalance was only a surface airoverlaying doubts and no little trepidation. But Marsyas, white andsternly intent, was the most resolute of the four.

  Capito stirred in his chair and prepared to speak, but Vitellius cut inwith a point-blank demand on the young Essene.

  "Dost thou know this man?" he asked, indicating Agrippa.

  "I do, lord," Marsyas answered, turning his somber eyes on the legate.

  "He owes three hundred thousand drachmae to Caesar; he says that thoucanst help him pay it; is it so?"

  "It is, lord."

  Agrippa's eyes were perfectly steady; it would not do to show amazementnow.

  "How?" was the next demand flung at the Essene.

  "I can place him in the way of certain wealth," was the assured reply.

  "How?"

  "The noble Roman's pardon, but there are certain things an Essene maynot divulge."

  Agrippa's well-bred brows lifted. Was this evader and collectedschemer the innocent Essene he had met on the slopes of Olivet theprevious evening?

  "Answer! Dost thou promise to provide the Herod with three hundredthousand drachmae which shall be paid unto Caesar's treasury?"

  "I promise to place the prince where he will provide himself with threehundred thousand drachmae. If he pay it not unto Caesar, the fault shallbe his, not mine."

  "Will the Essenes do it?"

  "It shall be done," Marsyas replied, his composure unshaken by themenace implied in the questioning.

  "Capito, what thinkest thou?" Vitellius demanded.

  The old collector shuffled his slippered feet, and his antique trebletook on an argumentative tone.

  "Caesar wants his money, not a slave; I want the emperor's commendation,not his blame. But let us b
ind this young Jew to this."

  Vitellius motioned to an orderly. "Send hither a notary; and let ustake down this Jew's promise. Now, Herod, speak up. There are norules of an order to bind you. Where shall you get this money?"

  "Of two sources," Agrippa declared, unblushing. "From the young manhimself and from the Essenes."

  "If you had so many moneyers, why have you not paid your debt long ago?"

  "I had not the indorsement of this young Essenic doctor to validate mynote, O Vitellius," the Herod responded with equanimity.

  The two Romans frowned; the clerk finished his transcription.

  "Sign!" Vitellius ordered Marsyas threateningly.

  Marsyas calmly wrote his name in Greek under the voucher. After himAgrippa signed the document.

  "Now, listen," Vitellius began conclusively. "I believe neither ofyou. But for the fact that Caesar would be burdened with a uselesschattel I should let Capito foreclose upon you, Agrippa. But there isa chance that this rigid youth may be telling the truth; if he isnot--" the legate closed his thin lips and let the menace of his hardeyes complete the sentence. Marsyas contemplated him, unmoved,undismayed, no less inflexible and determined.

  "The punishment for his offense against you, Agrippa, is remitted. Getyou gone. Capito! Follow them!"

  Totally undisturbed by this sudden entanglement in a supposedly clearskein, Agrippa waved his hand and smiled.

  "Many thanks, Vitellius," he said. "Would I could get my debts paid ifonly to deserve thy respect once more. But thy hospitality must be alittle longer strained. The wolves of Jonathan wait without to layhands on this young man. He must be passed the gates in disguise. Iprovided for that last night. Admit my servants, I pray thee."

  "Have your way, Herod, and fortune go with you, curse you for a winsomeknave," Vitellius growled.

  Agrippa laughed, but there was no laughter in his eyes.

  The two were led through a second hall instinct with barbaricsplendors, to a small apartment where they were presently attended bytwo servants.

  One was a slow, stolid Jew of middle-age, with stubbornness and honestythe chief characteristics of his face. The other would have won moreinterest from the casual observer. He was young, well-formed, but ofuncertain nationality. His head was like a cocoanut set on its smallerend, and covered with thick, stiff, lusterless black hair, cut closeand growing in a rounded point on his forehead. One eye was smallerthan the other and the lid drooped. The fault might have given him aroguish look but for the ill-natured cut of his mouth. Both wore thebrown garments of the serving-class.

  When Agrippa and Marsyas stood up from the ministrations of these two,they were fit figures for a procession of patricians on the PalatineHill. Marsyas' soiled white garments had been put off for a tunic andmantle of fine umber wool, embroidered with silver. A tallith of silkof the same color was bound with a silver cord about his forehead.Agrippa's garments were only a short white tunic of extraordinaryfineness belted with woven gold, and a toga of white, edged withpurple. But the prince examined Marsyas with an interested eye.

  "By Kypris!" he said aloud, "and thou art to entomb thyself in En-Gadi!"

  But Marsyas did not understand.

  Capito awaited them when they emerged, and announced himself ready toproceed. Procedure was to be an elaborate thing. A squad of soldieryhad been detailed as escort, and stood prepared in marching order; thecollector's personal array of apparitors was assembled; his baggagesent forth to his pack-horses,--himself, duly arrayed after the fashionof a conventional old Roman afraid of color.

  Agrippa placed himself beside the collector with an equanimity that wasalmost disconcerting. The old man signed his apparitors to proceed andfollowed with his two virtual prisoners.

  Through the envelope of grief and rancor, the grave difficulties of hispredicament reached Marsyas. Unless he could be rid of thesurveillance of Capito, both he and the Herod were in sore straits.But Agrippa's amiable temper presaged something, and Marsyas merged thenew distress with the burden of misery which bowed him.

  They passed out of the simpler portions of the royal house into thestate wing and emerged in the great audience-chamber.

  It would have been impossible for a scion of that bloody house to passfor the first time in years through that royal chamber without commentupon it. Agrippa after crossing the threshold slackened his step andhis eyes took on the luster of retrospection.

  "I remember it," he said in a preoccupied way, "but only as a dream. Iwent this way when my father and mother fared hence to Rome!"

  Capito lagged also, and Marsyas and the men following slackened theirsteps, until by the time the center of the vast hall was reached theypaused as if by one accord.

  The hall was an octagonal, faced half its height, or to the floor ofits galleries, in banded agate from the Indies; from that point upwardthe lining was marble panels and frescoes, alternating. The gallerieswere supported by a series of interlaced oriental arches, rich withtracery and filigree. With these main features as groundwork, thebarbaric fancy of Herod the Great threw off all restraint and reveledin magnitude, richness and display. He did not permit Greece, the_arbiter elegantarium_, to govern his building or his garnishment. Heharkened to the Arab in him and made a bacchanal of color; heremembered his one-time poverty and debased the hauteur of gold to thehumility of wood and clay and stone. He imaged Life in all its formsand crowded it into mosaics on his pavement, subjected it in thedecoration of his scented wood couches, tables, taborets, weighted itwith the cornices of his ceilings, the rails of his balustrades, thebasins of his fountains--until he seemed to shake his scepter as despotover all the beast kind. He was a hunter, a warrior and a statesman;the instincts of all three had their representation in this, his highplace. He was a voluptuary, a tyrant, and a shedder of blood; hisaudience-chamber told it of him. Thus, though he had crumbled to ashesforty years before, and the efforts of the world to forget him hadalmost succeeded, he left a portrait behind him that would endure aslong as his palace stood.

  The light of the Judean sun came in a harlequinade of twenty colors,but, where it fell and was reproduced, Nature had mastered thekaleidoscope and made it a glory. The immense space, peopled withgraven images, yet animated with ghostly swaying of hangings, had itsown shifting currents of air, drafts that were streaming winds, cooland scented with the aromatic woods of the furniture. The portals wereclosed, and there was no sound. Sun, wind and silence ennobled Herod'smistakes.

  The four stood longer than they knew. Then Agrippa made a littlesound, a sudden in-taking of the breath.

  "See!" he whispered, laying a hand on Capito's shoulder and pointingwith the other. "That statue!"

  Following his indication, their eyes rested on the sculptured figure ofa woman, cut from Parian marble. It was a drowsy image, the headfallen upon a hand, the lids drooping, the relaxation of all themuscles giving softness and pliability to the pose. So perfect was thework that the marble promised to be yielding to the touch. Someimitator of Phidias had achieved his masterpiece in this. Indeed, atfirst glance there was startlement for the four. A warm human flushhad mantled the stone, and Marsyas' brows drew together, but he couldnot obey the old Essenic teaching and drop his eyes.

  "A statue?" Capito asked, uncertainly taking his withered chin betweenthumb and forefinger.

  "A statue," Agrippa assured him. "The illumination is from thebatement light above. Come nearer!"

  He led them to the angle in which the image stood, not more than threepaces from the wall.

  "It is my grandsire's queen, Mariamne," he continued softly, forordinary tones awakened ghostly echoes in the haunted hall.

  "Murdered Mariamne!" the old man whispered with sudden intensity.

  "He loved her, and killed her in the fury of his love. They said thatthe king was wont to come in the morning when the sun stood there,drive out the attendants so that none might hear, and cling about thisfair marble's knees in such agony of passion and remor
se and grief thatlife would desert him. They would come in time to find him there,stretched on the pavement, cold and inert, to all purposes dead! Andit was said that these groins here above held echoes of his awful griefafter he had been borne away."

  Capito shivered.

  "What punishment!" he exclaimed.

  "Punishment! They who curse Herod's memory could not, if they hadtheir will, visit such torture upon him as he invented for himself!"

  But Capito was lost now in contemplation of the statue.

  "She was beautiful," he said after a silence.

  "Didst ever see her?" Agrippa asked eagerly. The collector's back wasturned to the prince, that he might have the advantageous view, and heanswered with rapt eyes.

  "Once; through an open gate which led into her own garden. So I sawher in the lightest of vestments, for the day was warm and half of herbeauty usually hidden was unveiled."

  "Well for thee my grandsire never knew," Agrippa put in, leaningagainst one of the cestophori which guarded a blank panel in the wall.

  "He never knew; but I would have died before I would give over thememory of it. She was slight, willowy, with the eyes of an Atticantelope, yet braver and more commanding than any woman-eye that everbewitched me. Her mouth--Praxiteles would have turned from Lais' lipsto hers."

  Agrippa's hand slid down the side of the cestophorus and fumbled alittle within the edge of the molding.

  "Her hair was loose," the old man went on, "the sole drapery of herbosom--a very cloud of night loomed into filaments--"

  An inert, moldy breath reached Marsyas. He turned his head. The panelbetween the cestophori was gone and a square of darkness yawned itsmiasma into the hall.

  The prince made a lightning movement; noiselessly the two servantsdived into the blackness; Marsyas followed; after him, the prince.

  An eclipsing wall began to slide between them and the hail they hadleft.

  "Her arms were languidly lifted--arms that for whiteness shamed thismarble--" the old man was saying as the panel glided back into placeand shut them in darkness.

  "Ow!" Agrippa whispered in delight, "he tells that story better everyyear!"