Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Saul contemplated. He could never agree on a single point with Aristo, but Aristo, like Dacyl, awakened him to the many-faceted crystal of existence, and its endless colors. Hillel had attempted this, but as Saul did not respect his mind, he had not succeeded.

  He was not attracted to the vice of Tarsus which he often saw. But he was less horrified and more saddened now at the sight of the tinted male whores he saw on the streets, and the cheap dissolute women in rough garments or in rich litters.

  He no longer averted his eves from the incense-fuming “heathen” temples of a score of alien religions. It was true that all mankind seemed desperately, if joyously, determined to debauch the human spirit, especially in the hot streets of Tarsus, but Saul was less nauseated or made angry by this display of depravity. He pitied it, and pitied all its votaries.

  Not to these had been given the Torah, the prophets, Moses and Solomon, and the promise of the Messias. Or, if the vision had been given—witness the Greek worship of the “Unknown God”—it had been nebulous and uncertain. Once Saul even entered a Greek temple and had looked at its marvelous and simple beauty and its heroic and graceful statues, and all the cloudy incense and the flowers and the charming vistas. There, too, he had found the empty altar, simple and plain and untenanted and inscribed, “To the Unknown God.” It waited for That which would give it significance and truth. For those who did not know what had been precisely promised the Jews, Saul felt bitter tears in his eyes.

  Hillel had often told him, “A Gentile is not less in the sight of God than a pious and reverent and devoted Jew. He, too, is a child of God the Father, blessed be His Glorious Name. He, too, according to the prophets, will partake of the salvation of the Messias. No man must be despised, nor considered lesser than another. You must honor his manhood, his brotherhood before God, you must deal with him justly and in honor, you must give him your compassion and your hand—even if he reject it. Diverse though we are—for the Father loves diversity, as He created it—in a most strange and mystical way mankind is all one. It has been said by Egyptian scientists that light, which appears to us to have a thousand hues and tints and is composed of endless colors, is truly but one light. And that light is the Spirit of God, and of man.”

  Saul had listened dutifully, and with the deep love he bore his father, but he had considered Hillel too simplistic and too devoid of the pride of a Jew whose fathers had been given a Covenant with God, and of whose flesh the Messias would be born. But now, as he daily walked the streets of Tarsus in the burnished autumn sunlight, he felt less pride than compassion, and he wondered why it was that other men had not been enlightened also. The Greeks had had their moral code, and so had the Romans and the Egyptians, but it had been a code rooted in some ethical principle and not in the Ancient of Days. Ethical principles devoid of a Source could be destroyed or abandoned by change, but principles established on Eternal Stone could never be moved.

  Love, though he did not know it, had given him not only a sense of completely belonging to all humanity, but a tender and powerful pity for it. And, sorrowfully, in the end—because he was still very young and inexperienced and had no confidant—love brought him a terror and a wrath and a disillusionment from which he was never completely to recover, and which was to haunt all his life, and cause him agony, and confound and baffle those necessary to him.

  In all his short life, Saul had never seen a morning so absolutely golden, so resonant with aureate tints and shades, so tawny and ebullient and life-compelling, though it was autumn and the dying year. The darkness of the cypresses emphasized the fiery yellow of other trees; tamarisks were still green but their boughs were gilded with the first topaz sun. Amber water poured smoothly with gentle thunder over the russet rocks and the pool itself was almost still and shiningly saffron. Crimson and lemon-yellow flowers bordered it and the tall grass was umbrous. The little rills and brooks which flowed from the pool quivered in bright copper over the land. The sky above was a deep purple still, pierced by shafts of bronzelike spears in the east, and beyond the very mountains appeared like lion-colored and writhing heaps of stone, pathed with the first thin snows.

  Saul carried a basket of scarlet pomegranates in his hand for Dacyl, and the scent of them, mingled with the scent, rich and fruity, from the land, excited him strangely, and he felt his heart rise with promise and unknown excitement and it made him hurry along the empty and twisting road to the cataract and the pool. Once there, he surveyed it all with delight. His heart was still pacing rapidly, and he smiled exuberantly and a rejoicing in life filled him. The Psalms of adoration seemed too puny to him to express the rapture he felt, and the nameless anticipation. He looked about for Dacyl, but she was not there.

  Then, suddenly, he trembled with fright. A jackal had appeared on the opposite side of the pond and the yellow creature had escaped his first notice for he blended so completely with the other natural tints about him. It was known that jackals carried rabies with them, and inflicted “the incurable wound” mentioned by Hippocrates, and Saul had watched a favorite young servant die, some years ago, choking with agony after the bite of a jackal.

  Jackals were sly but cowardly creatures. Unless mad, they did not attack human beings. But once mad they were like tigers. Saul’s first impulse was to run, to find Dacyl and to keep her from approaching the pond if she were on the way. Then he was again affrighted. The jackal had seen him. Instead of slinking away, as was the nature of jackals, the animal’s legs stiffened, his fur bristled and his evil head appeared to engorge. His wild eyes glowed in the first light and from his throat there issued a terrible snarling. So, the creature was afflicted with the dread disease. Saul now saw the line of bloody foam along the jackal’s jaw.

  Stricken with terror, Saul could not look away. He dared not flee for fear of pursuit. Holding the animal with his eyes he slowly bent and lifted a heavy and jagged stone in his hand. Then he shouted menacingly. The jackal retreated a pace or two, but his snarling was like the grinding of rocks and then he uttered a howl of madness and shook from head to foot. But he retreated no more.

  It was then that Dacyl appeared, laughing, calling to Saul because she had heard his shout and she had believed that he was summoning her in impatience. There she stood, only a few paces from the jackal and on the mossy bank of the pool, looking across the water at Saul and smiling gaily, and waving.

  Sweat rushed out upon Saul’s flesh, and he was dumb. Then as Dacyl continued her waving and was beginning to seem a trifle perplexed, Saul found his voice. “Go into the water, Dacyl!” he called. “Swim to me! Do not hesitate! There is a jackal near you and he is mad!”

  The girl turned her head and saw the beast. He had begun to crouch for the charge upon her, and she faintly screamed and fell back. “Swim!” shouted Saul, almost beside himself. “To me! Now!”

  Dacyl flung herself into the water, not removing the cloak she wore against the cool morning wind. Her clothing restrained her strokes; she twisted and turned in the water too slowly, and Saul dropped the basket of pomegranates and stepped into the water, himself. He had a confused thought that as rabies brought about a fear and dread of water the jackal would turn away. But Saul was hardly a few feet worn the bank when the animal hurled himself into the pool in pursuit of Dacyl. Now he was howling and choking in a frenzy and the horrid sounds echoed in the morning silence.

  Saul clenched the jagged stone in his fist and began to swim toward Dacyl. He swam between her and the enraged beast, and the yellow head was like a mat of wool above the water. Saul kicked off his sandals and tore off his cloak and summoned all his strength to intercept the jackal and save Dacyl from a fatal bite. The water was chill and paralyzing, for the year was late. Saul saw Dacyl’s desperate white face above the water, and the long black floating of her hair and the entangling cloak and her threshing arms. She was whimpering and straining in her flight, and her eyes implored him for rescue.

  Now he was between the jackal and the girl. “Swim faster!” he shoute
d, resolutely facing the tormented animal. “Reach the bank!” He had heard that the power of the human eye was feared by beasts and he fixed his eyes on the jackal and did not look again at Dacyl, whose gasping he heard behind him.

  The jackal, however, had apparently not known that he was to fear the human eye, or he was too maddened. He halted briefly in the water, churning and snarling, and now his attention was fixed solely on Saul. The pool foamed about his struggling legs. Saul clearly saw the rabid glare in the jackal’s eyes and for a moment or two he felt renewed and shaking terror, for his own life was at stake. His legs appeared to have a life of their own, urging him to flee and save himself. But he could not abandon Dacyl; the thought did not even occur to him. His heart was one lump of straining fire in his chest.

  The jackal hesitated. Saul was swimming between him and his first pursuit, and so was nearer. He half lifted himself in the water, howling, and launched himself at the youth. And at that instant Saul’s strong legs came down and encountered a rock in the water, on which he stood, and his whole sturdy body tightened itself for the attack and fear left him. His mind moved with amazing speed and order.

  He waited until the jackal was almost upon him, jaws open and slavering, teeth blood-stained and snapping. Then he reached out swiftly, caught the animal by the throat with his left hand and struck him fiercely on the very top of the head with the jagged stone he still held. The sharp point sank between the wild eyes, deeply, and a hideous shriek of pain burst from the afflicted creature. He fought to release himself, as blood welled about the daggerlike point of stone. Saul shuddered with loathing at the sight and feel of him.

  But he clung to the matted throat, tore out the stone and this time he plunged it directly into the right eye of the beast, turning and thrusting it with incredible strength. He felt it reach the soft and fevered brain, and now he clenched his teeth with renewed resolution, withdrew the stone again and drove it into the animal’s throat, just above his own hand, and again he turned and thrust with all the power he could produce. The water about him was stained with deadly scarlet in an instant, and the rising sun glittered on the cataract and on the pool, and Saul was bloodied.

  Saul felt the dying animal relax and become limp, but again he thrust the stone into the left eye, using his last strength. The jackal sank below the surface of the water, slowly, in scarlet ripples, and died, its legs and body flaccid and drifting.

  Saul, watching that sinking, shuddered again. He had never killed anything before. He could hear his own breath in the stillness, raucous and groaning. He retreated from the spot where the animal ad died, and he began to wash his arms and hands with clear water, for fear of the gouts of blood on them and the lethal saliva and any fleck of foam which might have been ejected onto his flesh.

  Then he thought of Dacyl. He turned and began to swim to the bank. The slave girl had collapsed upon the warming earth in a huddle of wet clothing, her face stark and still as she watched Saul’s approach. She could not move. Even when he was beside her she could only stare up at him, as gray as death, her black eyes great in her face.

  Saul said, “The beast is dead. The pool is poisoned. Poor Dacyl. It is all over. You must not be afraid now.”

  Dacyl reached up dumbly for his hand and he took it and tried to warm it between his own cold and pouring hands. She was trying to speak. He bent tenderly to hear her.

  “Hercules,” she said, and smiled dimly. “Perseus. Odysseus.”

  Saul drew her quaking body to its feet and attempted to laugh. “It was nothing,” he said. “Could I abandon you?” He put his soldiers arms about her body, holding it tightly against him in a sudden frenzy of joy and love. “Do I not love you, my dear one?”

  Water streamed from them, but their relief and their love warmed them, and the sun began to strike hotly on their bodies. Dacyl lifted one of Saul’s hands and humbly kissed it. Her wet black hair, as soft as silk, fell over his bared arm. At the touch of her lips Saul trembled again, and desire struck him like a knife. When the girl raised her head he sought her lips, not gently and pleasantly as during the months before, but with ardor and lust and passion. They were sweet against his, and moist and cool. They parted in surrender, and she wound her arms about his neck and pressed her body against his, murmuring he knew not what. He could feel her young breast against his chest, urgent and straining and taut. Instinctively he reached for her breast and held one in the cup of his immediately hot and exploring hand, and she murmured again, languidly, clinging to him.

  He had never touched a woman’s breast before, and the feel of it in his hand drove him almost out of his mind. Together, still clinging, they fell on the warm bank among the tall and dusty grass, and the world became one deep drum of passion and incoherent sound and heat and delicious struggle. Above them the cataract sang and the sun brightened and golden dust floated in the air, and there was a wild sweet roaring in the youth’s ears.

  Saul was totally lost. He obeyed the instincts of his flesh, and was caught up in inexplicable and overpowering sensation, agonizingly sweet yet terrible in its urgent intensity. He lay upon Dacyl and took her savagely, and she held him to her and gently bit his throat and moaned with delight and pleasure. Their bodies were as hot as flame, and like flame they merged together, and all about them was the scent of agitated grasses and flowers, and the singing of the water. Entwined, they were conscious of nothing but ecstasy. Saul felt the moving of Dacyl’s flesh under him, and each movement intensified his sensations and he could not know if they were pain or bliss. He felt her tongue licking his ear tenderly, and heard her moaning breath and felt her quickening movements. When the culmination arrived he thought, vaguely, that he had died in one explosion of rapture and that it was a death not to be rued for it was greater than life, like the bursting of a sun or a raining of stars.

  His eyes were closed. Sweating and gasping, he lay upon the girl and it was some moments before he rolled from her body and lay beside her, overwhelmed with what he had experienced. He had no immediate thoughts. He had only memory of something of immense and incredible joy and transport, beyond which was nothing comparable.

  Dacyl raised herself upon one elbow and looked down at him, smiling, her lips bright red and swollen, her drying hair warm on her naked shoulders and breast. He felt her movement and sluggishly opened his eyes, and he saw her face bent over him and it was more beautiful than he had ever known. Slowly he lifted his hand and touched her cheek, and she turned that cheek and kissed the palm of his hand. He heard a. deep chuckling in her white throat, of contentment and affection. One bare pale leg lay over one of his.

  Then, like a cold fist hitting his heart he thought, “I have ruined and deflowered and raped and ravaged this innocent child, and I am accursed.”

  “What is wrong, beloved?” asked Dacyl, alarmed at the pallor and rigidity of the face below hers.

  He turned his head aside. He wanted to weep with despair and regret and shame that he had taken this pure one and had defiled her, and that she had submitted to his lust out of gratitude and because she was only a slave and so could not deny an urgent man. Truly, he was anathema in the sight of God and men, and how could he atone for his sin and his crime? Who could forgive him? He deserved an ignominous death.

  Dacyl began to stroke the strong red crest of his hair, and his throat. “You are a veritable hero, beloved,” she said in her childish voice. “I am yours, forever. I am your slave, adorable one. Not even Venus had so puissant a protector and lover, strong beyond the strength of other men. How she must envy me, the pearl of Cyprus!” She kissed his cheek tenderly.

  Above her head the sky had turned a flaming blue and the golden cataract gushed in liquid music and the pool was again the color of young lemons. The grass and moss were soft beneath them, and languor held them. But Saul suffered in his soul profoundly.

  He said, “Forgive me, my dear one, forgive me if it is possible.”

  Dacyl’s lustrous black eyes widened with astonishment above him
. She bent to see him more clearly, as if incredulous that he had said these words. The metallic blue of his strange eyes were suffused with tears, and Dacyl was amazed.

  “Forgive you!” she exclaimed. “It is you who should forgive me for placing you in jeopardy with my carelessness! Forgive you! I adore you, my hero, my Apollo, with hair like the sun and muscles armor! If life holds nothing more for me than this morning, I am grateful to all the gods that they permitted me to lie with you and comfort you and reward you.”

  Saul tried to smile at this innocent childishness. He stroked the soft side of her throat with a gentle hand. “But I ravaged you, dear one. I took advantage of your distraught state. I have deflowered you, and who can restore your purity?”

  Dacyl sat upright, and abruptly. She stared down at him in wonderment. Then after a long moment she began to smile, and it was a woman’s humorous smile and not a girl’s.

  “Is that what troubles you, my foolish one?” she said with soothing affection. “Go to! I am seventeen years old, and am not a virgin. Surely, you did not believe me one!” She laughed with rich tenderness. “I have not been a virgin since I was twelve years old. I was bestowed on the overseer of my master’s estate at that age, and we are to be married. I am pledged to him by my mistress, the noble Fabiola, and we will then be given our freedom and an olive grove, and we will be content! But I will love you always, even when I see you no more.”

  Stunned and stricken and dumb, Saul listened to that light and happy voice, and finally he understood. He had been thinking as a Jew, but this girl was a heathen and had been born and reared in an atmosphere alien to his knowledge, alien to his comprehension. To her, no sin had been committed. She had garnered pleasure as one chooses a bauble, for an hour’s gratification, and then forgotten, discarded. She lived and had her being in a hedonist society where everything was permitted, honor scorned, desecration a matter for laughter, adultery a moment’s mere satisfaction, fornication accepted, and lasciviousness a thing to be cultivated and pursued. She belonged to a world detested and feared by pious Jews, execrated by them, avoided by them, and she was no longer Dacyl, the innocent slave gill over whom he had wept in secret, but the “strange woman” whose lips were the portals to hell. Into the pit of her body he, Saul ben Hillel, had incontinently and precipitously fallen, and he was lost.