Saul of Tarsus: A Tale of the Early Christians

by Elizabeth Miller

  CHAPTER XXII

  "IN THE CLOAK OF TWO COLORS"

  Marsyas turned on the gilded couch, threw off the light covering andsat up. A Syrian slave thrust aside the heavy drapery over thecancelli, which had been drawn in the atrium while the young man slept.

  In the brilliant light of the Roman mid-afternoon, Marsyas lookedsleepily at the slave that bowed beside him, and the courier that stoodnear by.

  "A message for thee," the slave said.

  Marsyas put out his hand and the courier laid in it a package wrappedin silk. Marsyas broke the seal and read the contents.

  "O MARSYAS:

  "Gossip hath it now that thou art no longer confused when a womanaddresses thee: wherefore I write with less trepidation and moreconfidence.

  "I am in Rome these seven days, under my father's roof, for a littlespace before we are commanded to join Caesar in Capri. In this time Ihave not seen thee nor thy lord.

  "If not myself, then perchance the news I bring from Alexandria mayurge thee to accept the invitation I extend.

  "There exists no greater claim than thine upon my hospitality.

  "Come thou, and make me welcome in mine own city.

  "JUNIA."

  Marsyas sprang up, the last of the languor gone from his face.

  "Thou shalt conduct me," he said to the messenger.

  He disappeared in the direction of his cubiculum.

  In a time longer than he had consumed in his old Essenic days toprepare himself for the streets he came again into Agrippa's atrium.

  It was hard to recognize in him the picturesque Jewish ascetic that hadbent over the scroll in the great college of Jerusalem. He hadpermitted the blade to come at his hair and beard; the kerchief hadbeen replaced by the fillet; the cloak and gown by the scarlet tunicand mantle, the daylight had been let in on his fine limbs, and therewas the fugitive glitter of jewels on his fingers and arms. He hadassumed perfumes and polishes, had laid aside all his oriental habitand had become not only a Roman but an exquisite. The change was notall in his dress; the indefinable something that marks the man ofexperience was upon him and the ascetic blankness was gone from hisbrow.

  He signed to the messenger to follow, and passing out of the house anddown the long banks of marble steps which led up to Agrippa'smagnificent eyrie on the brink of the Quirinal, entered a lectica thatawaited him in the streets.

  Years are not time enough to weary one of Rome.

  Marsyas had come into the capital with a spirit benumbed by a greatshock, so that the first day he walked the imperial streets he was lessconscious of their wonders than he was at this hour.

  He was borne through narrow lanes that were like clefts between heightsof marble, under arches, chronicling the solemn consummation oftriumph, along crowding pillars that arose out of the ravines betweenthe seven hills, and, catching the sunlight on their white capitals,cast it down in the gloom of the depressions. Glories clambered up thebosom of the Esquiline; templed sanctity crowned the Aventine, andmight in marble and gold sat on the Palatine. Between were splendorand squalor, confused, for only beauty stood up above the miseries anddefilement that made Rome hateful in its unsunned ways.

  The feebleness of unwieldy and disunited multitudes cumbered theCarinae, along which he passed. Starvation and the excess of plenty,power and abject subjection, unspeakable depravity and innocence metand passed. The slaves preceding the young man's litter made way forit with staff and pilum, or again it made way for slaves bearing fascesand maces. He did not proceed unnoticed. Albucilla, widow of SatriusSecundus, in a litter with Cneius Domitius, turned from the languidsenator at her side to cast a bewitching smile at the young Essene;Ennia, wife of Macro, the praetorian prefect, leaned from her litter tocry him an invitation.

  "To Tusculum! Come with us!"

  "Many thanks: yet I would the invitation came to-morrow!"

  "It shall," she said in answer and was borne on. Running slaves pushedby him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that thelectica they bore contained Caligula, Caesar's grand-nephew. Agrippina,a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast asidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as heapproached. Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga andstumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave himwith a smile and a greeting. As the young Jew was borne on he did notrealize that he had made room for three coming Caesars in the Carinae.After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, allproceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned offthe Carinae and began to mount the Esquiline. In a few minutes he wasset down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greektemple, as compact as a fortification.

  The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led himinto the vestibule and left him for a moment. Presently, asoft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and beggedhim to follow. He was led into Junia's atrium.

  The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli,turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise. But honestfeeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stoodbefore her.

  "Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him. "Would thou wast a god!Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!"

  "Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would comeriding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded.

  She laughed and shook her finger at him.

  "How hopeless a ruin thou art! A Jew speaking of the gods!" He ledher to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. With bright eyesand a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment.

  "It is true!" she cried at last. "And I do not like to see it! Thouart indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria."

  "A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "But tell me of thyself, andafter that of them that remain in Alexandria."

  "No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee. Allthy misdeeds are known to me. When I forewarned thee of the variousattributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks! I have heard howthou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half ascore of merry running courtships in the capital. I see thee, how thouhast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes theethrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. And thou anEssene! Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of thesalty desert of En-Gadi--some time! Overshadowing the Herod till invery despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and theatria to thee! Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"

  The young man smiled a little bitterly. Cypros' charge had not beendifficult, since his Essenism had been the obstacle which lay betweenhim and that love he would have, though it cost him his soul!

  "But Rome enlarges," he protested. "Agrippa chaseth the elusive bubbleof Fortune: and I--having a purpose to be achieved in his success--Ispeed him--in mine own way. But enough of ourselves. Tell me ofAlexandria!"

  "But wait! I have not done. The charm of beauty hath lost its potencyhere in Rome, where it is the business of every one to be beautiful.The charm of riches is debased because of its great prevalence, sinceevery one hath his honor to sell, and honor commands the highest price.The charm of rank is dissolved, for there is no rank with a centurion'sson bearing the aegis, and freedmen dispensing hospitality in themansions of the ancient Quirites! Wherefore there is only one rare,unpurchasable charm--newness--and Roman society speedily dulls theluster of that, if one stoops to flourishing socially. Beware, myMarsyas!"

  He remembered that she had always been concerned for his uprightness,in a strangely unspiritual way. He had heard of upright atheists;somehow she seemed to belong in that category with her moral, butirreligious chidings. Now, she was bearing him welcome testimony thathe had changed.

  "Be neither frequent nor democratic. Saith Agricola, the pleb,'Brutus, the senator, is nobody; he speaks to me!' By Castor! I hadrather endure the contempt of the great
than the approval of the small.Wherefore, save thyself, as a rare wine, fit for only imperial feasts.And lest thou be lonely meantime, let me amuse thee."

  "How can I expect it, when thou wilt not tell me now what I wish?" hecomplained.

  "But this is trial of thy gallantry: I have as great a curiosity asthine. So thou wilt wait for me. Thou hast been in Rome four months.Tell me what happened in that time."

  Marsyas slipped down in his chair and clasped his hands back of hishead.

  "None leads a droning life who associates with Agrippa," he said. "Ihave not seen a restful hour since I met him in Judea. Nay, then; hearme. He landed at Capri, on the invitation of the emperor, and repairedto the palace where, with the same grace that hath made me and othershis slaves, he won back in a single audience all the favor that he hadforfeited in twenty years. He came away radiant and under promise toreturn the following night, and dine with the emperor. But the nextmorning, who should drop anchor in the bay but Herrenius Capito, lividwith wrath because he had been outwitted at every turn by Agrippa. Onewould think it were he whom Agrippa owed, so indecent his fervor inreporting him. What followed but that the same imperial hand which hadbeen stretched in welcome to the prince one day, was, the next,extended in banishment over him."

  "What misfortune!" Junia exclaimed, half in sympathy, half in irony."Ate, herself, must be the patron genius of the Herod."

  "Hot upon Herrenius' heels came Vitellius' contubernalis, with awarrant for me, but we, meanwhile, had taken ship and sailed for Ostia.And hear me, when I say, that some rabid foe had dropped theinformation of our whereabouts, in Judea! I repaired to Rome, borrowedthree hundred thousand drachmae of Antonia, the _univira_, anddespatched messengers to Caesar and Herrenius Capito telling that thedebt so long overlooked had been paid, before my pursuer reached Rome.So we laid the ghost of our debts. But feeling unhappy owing no man, Iimmediately borrowed a million drachmae of Thallus, Caesar's freedman,repaid Antonia, and established ourselves magnificently on theQuirinal. Hence, being in debt and in favor again, we have nothing totrouble us but the serious pursuit of our respective ambitions. But--!"

  He stopped abruptly.

  "O prescient contingent!" she said softly. "Does the Herod dally withhis opportunities?"

  "Worse: he affronts them! Worse: those opportunities are not alone forhim! Part of them are mine!"

  Her lips shaped an exclamation, but he went on.

  "Listen; it is a proper sending on thee, for insisting on plunging meinto narrative. An oriental story-teller and a circle make no end.Even as thou saidst to me in Alexandria so many weeks ago, Rome lookethtwo ways for a new Emperor. Here is the little Tiberius, Drusus' son,and there is Caligula, Caesar's grandnephew. Now Caesar seeth in thelittle Tiberius a successor. Fatuous dotage! The praetorians arestubbornly attached to Caligula, because forsooth he wore miniatureboots like theirs when he tumbled about in the peplus of an infant.The reason is good enough to be a woman's! Be it as it may, that lean,sallow, gluttonous Caligula is brow-marked for the crown!"

  "_Hercle_! but thou art as good an image-maker with words as Phidiaswas with a stone!"

  "Patience! On a certain day, Agrippa and I went without the PortaEsquilina to get into our chariots and drive to Tusculum. Many weregoing, as many go every day. We had mounted our car, withEutychus--would he were at the bottom of the Tiber!--as charioteer,when young Tiberius came and mounted his, and Caligula came and mountedhis. After them directly followed a cohort of praetorians. Theirbright armor, their noise, their steady undeviating advance, frightenedlittle Tiberius' horses, which backed into Caligula's chariot andfrightened his pair. The four bolted at once; the chariots upset andboth princes were spilled on the ground directly in front of theadvancing cohort.

  "The tribune hastily brought up the column and Tiberius and Caligulawere helped to their feet. The lad withdrew to the roadside, butCaligula turned upon the soldiers and flung camp-jokes at them, sobroad, so bold, so rough, that, at first chuckling, then roaring, thewhole cohort burst into a great shout in honor of their favorite.

  "Meanwhile, Eutychus had permitted his horses by bad management tobecome unruly. Agrippa seized the lines away from him and lashed himacross the shoulders once or twice, to the great rage of thecharioteer. I had in the meanwhile to alight and quiet the animals.Agrippa then drove toward Tiberius to offer him the hospitality of hischariot, while the slaves were pursuing the runaways. The boy saw himcoming, understood the prince's intent and handed his cloak to a slavepreparatory to mounting Agrippa's car, when the cohort began to cheerCaligula.

  "What did Agrippa, then, but wheel his horses, drive over to thesoldiers' favorite and take him into the car!"

  "What! Did that thing openly?"

  "Deliberately! The boy paled, flushed, and whirling about, stalkedback inside of the walls, before I could invent an excuse to coverAgrippa's slight. And after him rushed a crowd of senators andaediles--his umbrae--to feed his hate of the Herod!"

  "What did Agrippa, then?" Junia asked after a dismayed silence.

  "He was long gone up the road to Tusculum with Caligula by that time."

  "It is not hard to guess how he lost Fortune before," Junia declared.

  "He plays at legerdemain with Caesar's favor," Marsyas said, annoyed athis own narrative. "Tiberius, most solemnly commended the boy Tiberiusto Agrippa's care and companionship. Caesar will hear of this!"

  "Inevitably! Tale-bearing is a fine art in Rome and Tiberius is itspatron. And thus he conducts himself in the face of Cypros' peril, whogave herself in hostage for him that he might succeed!"

  "Cypros' peril!" Marsyas repeated, with startled eyes.

  "Of Flaccus!"

  Marsyas' astonishment was not pleasant.

  "Why of Flaccus?" he asked.

  "What! Hath Agrippa kept his counsel, thus long? Dost thou not knowthat Flaccus hath an eye to the timid Cypros and Agrippa, discoveringit, all but killed Flaccus in a passage back of the temple, on thenight of the Dance of Flora?"

  Marsyas looked at her steadily.

  "How much dost thou know of this thing?" he demanded.

  "Can I know too much of it?" she asked plaintively.

  "No!" he answered penitently.

  "Then I know all of it, cause, process and result," she declared.

  "Tell it me, then!"

  "Nay, then; Flaccus was in love with Cypros in Rome, when she was senthere twenty years ago to marry Agrippa. So much he loved her, thattwenty years after, when next he met her, his old passion wasrevived--stronger, less submissive and more dangerous than that of hisyouth. Whether or not he spoke of it to Agrippa, or simply betrayedhimself, the night of the Feast, is not patent; nevertheless theproconsul was discovered half-killed, in an alley back of the Temple ofRannu, and the Herod had sailed suddenly and without farewell toCypros, in the night."

  "How didst thou learn of this?"

  "O simple youth! Is it then so common in Judea for powers to bediscovered with their hearts stunned, that no comment is made upon it?Or perchance thou givest Flaccus credit for suffering in silence? Thatis better. Know, however, that he was discovered by the constabulary,and straightway such an outcry was never heard in Alexandria. But theproconsul aroused and cut it off in full voice. And there he made anerror. He was made to be a straightforward man; he is too cumbrous tobe a knave. So speculation ran abroad in whispers, till the true causewas unearthed."

  "And Cypros?"

  "Cypros? Now canst thou, knowing Cypros, ask of her expecting anychange? Beautiful statues do not change. What they express when theyare finished they express until they are broken. When she came fromunder the sculptor's chisel, she was made to love her husband, and herbabes, to believe whatever is told her, be beautiful, simple and good."

  "So much the more Flaccus must have distressed her!"

  "She does not suspect him!"

  "What!"

  "Amazement, at times, gentle sir, is reproach; wherefore since I am theaut
hor of this device, thou wilt be less astounded and, so, morecomplimentary. I knew that Cypros, being sweet, simple and guileless,would do no more than treat the proconsul with bitter disdainthereafter, and precipitate a climax, which in my opinion would entailtwenty diverse calamities. I know Flaccus, I have sent the plummet tothe bottom of his oceanic nature. I also know that the Lady Herod isan anomaly in her family, clean, faithful and loving. So with Agrippaout of reach, the proconsul may conspire all he pleases to alienate theprincess from her Arab, in vain. Wherefore I permitted the goodalabarch in all innocence to go in his magisterial robes to theproconsul's mansion and express his indignation, concern and anxioushopes, and to say that Agrippa had taken advantage of favorable windsto depart for Rome. I can see the smoldering eyes of the proconsulstudy the white old face of that perfect diplomat and discover no guilethereon. So apparent the alabarch's sincerity, that after due lapse oftime in which the proconsul plucked up courage and front, Flaccusresumed his visits to the alabarch's house. And for all outward signs,it was another and not Agrippa that dinted the Roman's chest!"

  Marsyas leaned his elbows on his knees and a line appeared between hislevel brows, marking the growing change from the thought of youth tothe thought of man.

  "Lady," he said gravely, after a pause, "it was Flaccus and not Agrippathat did the bloodthirsty deeds back of the Temple of Rannu; and it wasI--and not Agrippa, that dinted the Roman's chest!"

  "What?" she ejaculated, springing up to lay hand on his arm. "Thou!"

  "Flaccus led Agrippa into a trap and stabbed him in the back," he wenton, "and I struck the blow that laid Flaccus low. And Agrippa wastaken aboard his ship that night, with a knife wound between hisshoulders, wholly ignorant of the identity of his assailant--until Itold him--three days out at sea!"

  After a long silence, she said softly:

  "And that was thine errand--for Flora!"

  Without a tremor he inclined his head in assent.

  "Nay, then," she began again, after another pause, "what more dost thouknow? How much of this tale thou heardest so deceitfully is incorrecthistory?"

  "Enough of Flaccus," he parried, smiling. "Tell me of--Classicus."

  Junia leaned back in her chair and laughed a little at his evasion.

  "Classicus? Classicus is a knave, one lacking invention, but notexecutive ability--wanting cunning, not courage. Now he leads us tobelieve that he examines a new religion--that same heresy for which heplunged thee into the Rhacotis peril. Some one put him up to it--markme. Thus, he hopes to recant his fault against thee, for which thelittle Lysimachus was most unbending to him!"

  "And Lydia?" he asked in a low tone.

  Her softened eyes, steadily contemplating the yellow light on theleaves of a huge plantain growing near her, narrowed.

  "Lydia?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Oh, Lydia dances and studies andmakes ready for her marriage with Classicus."

  One of those utter silences fell, which mark the announcement ofcritical news. After it, Marsyas arose.

  "I have profited by my visit," he said, in that soft and silken voicewhich she had never heard before and did not understand. "I thank theefor thy counsel--and thy news."

  He extended her his hand, and she looked at him, feeling that it wasnot steady.

  "And thou wilt come again before I go?" she went on. "We are summonedto Capri where my father hath been recently made a minister toTiberius. Come again, and let me lead thee back to thine old self."

  "Perchance," he said evenly, "I have uselessly troubled myself tochange."

  He pressed her hand and passed out.

  At the threshold of her portals, he met Agrippa.

  "Perpol!" the prince cried. "Hast thou supplanted me here, too?"

  But Marsyas smiled painfully and went on. Agrippa looked after him.

  "Nay, now: the boy is as pale as ivory!" he ruminated. "That is anhonest youth, and Junia must let him alone."