Great Lion of God

by Taylor Caldwell

  Saul bowed and smiled. Then his worn face became serious and he said, “These men, including the one who calls himself the High Priest, have only doctrinal charges to bring against me, though these doctrines they claim are false are part of my sect, the Pharisees. For we believe in the resurrection of the dead, and the Sadducees do’ not, and I have proclaimed my faith, which is ancient and which was given to us by God, blessed be His Name, through His prophets. But the Sadducees, who now rule the holy city, consider that faith ridiculous, and wish to impose their secularism on a devout and prayerful people, saying that only man is important and is ruler of the universe, and that God is dead. But,” and he looked at the High Priest directly, “we will oppose that edict of the Devil with our lives, if necessary, and if that is sedition so be it.”

  Felix yawned, glanced at the water clock. He said, in a virtuous tone, “Whosoever declares the gods dead is blasphemous, and a fool.” He said suddenly to the High Priest, “Are you one of those Sadducees?”

  Ananias’ pale cheeks turned pink. He gave Saul a vicious glance, then returned to Felix. “Lord,” he said, “the matter is not so simple.”

  “It never is with you Jews,” said Felix. He scratched his ear. “My own wife, Drusilla, can never state a case plainly, in a few words, and in this she is even worse than other women. They prattle for hours and say nothing, but my wife can talk for days and end with the very sentence she began. I think that all Jews, and all women, are born lawyers, and I dislike lawyers.”

  He knitted his black brows at Ananias, who was gazing with a martyred air at Tertullus, who seemed to have lost his eloquent talent of oratory. Felix said, “If you have only doctrinal matters to charge against this man—who denies even these charges—then I must hold him only on your charges against him concerning Rome, and we will judge of that later. It is now outside your province.”

  He said to Saul, “The charges of sedition against Rome are serious, and though these men have no proof, but only their sly opinions, which I do not trust, and no Roman has as yet charged you, I must hold you for a space, to consider the matter.”

  Chapter 52

  THE wife of Felix, the Roman Procurator, was named Drusilla, and she was of the House or Tribe of Benjamin, like Saul, himself. Drusilla was short, resembling her husband, and was a fat and bustling little woman with an air of uncommon sense and capability, and she was childless, a woman in her middle-age. She was also astonishingly like Clodia Flavius, the mother-in-law of Sephorah, Saul’s sister, except that her eyes were like little balls of black glass, knowing and disillusioned. She ruled her household vigorously, and was not disturbed by her husband’s frolicking with slave girls; in truth, she approved of it, for he had a way of interfering in household matters and scrutinizing bank accounts and complaining over expenses, for he was a restless man. The girls kept him occupied and pleasantly tired, so Drusilla did not object. She loved the little violent Roman, and he loved and revered her, and was terrified of her, and complained of her to anyone who would listen. Hearing those complaints, Drusilla would smile indulgently and herself prepare a special delight for his delectation at dinner.

  She thought long about Saul ben Hillel, of her own Tribe, in Herod’s Hall, and she knew his history. Like herself, he was also a Pharisee. She had sent the old Jewess to cook his meals and serve him, for the Pharisees were very rigorous concerning food. She listened to Felix’s half-jesting stories of Saul’s miraculous powers. It was rumored that he had raised a dead man in Ephesus, and had instantly restored hundreds to health again by the mere laying-on of his hands. “It is not a strange story,” she told her husband. “Many wandering rabbis throughout our history possessed such powers, given to them by God, blessed be His Name.”

  “But they did not contrive to get themselves so generally hated as Paul of Tarsus,” said Felix. “So it is possible that he is not holy. Why are you Jews so obsessed with your God?”

  “I have told you many times,” said Drusilla. “He chose us. We did not choose Him.”

  “Hah,” said Felix. “You Jews are not more virtuous or worse, than other men, and you resemble all races! Wiry did not your God choose us Romans? We already have an Empire for Him, better-administered, it is obvious, than your priest-ruled Israel.”

  It had long been Drusilla’s hope that Felix would become a Jew, but he had made a certain lewd remark concerning this, including the fact that his favorite female slaves might complain about the matter. Drusilla had smiled comfortably, without offense. But she thought of Saul for a long time. Then one day she went to Herod’s Hall, accompanied by two middle-aged women of her household, and Saul received her with great courtesy. “Greetings to the Lady Drusilla,” he said, “and I am doubly honored, for we are of the same’ Tribe, I am informed, and you are also a Pharisee.”

  Drusilla explained in Aramaic that she wished to inspect his household and to order his comfort. She inquired about many small details, and in the meantime she was shrewdly studying him with her small wise eyes. Then she asked him to accompany her to his garden, where she desired to see if the vegetables and flowers were receiving the rightful care, and she left her slave women behind. She walked beside Saul, panting in the heat and frankly wiping her damp red face with her headcloth, and heaving. Saul impressed her, though he was not of great stature nor of a handsome appearance, but was old and his thick hair was white and he wore no beard because of his skin affliction, and she could discern that he was bowed of legs even through his long tunic of brown linen, and he had an afflicted eye. However, when he spoke he immediately commanded attention and Drusilla reflected that never had she heard before such a strong and beautiful voice, persuasive and firm and eloquent.

  “Rabbi,” she said, after they had considered the garden, “I trust you do not hold animosity toward my husband for your confinement here.”

  Saul was surprised. He looked down at Drusilla and said, gently, “Lady, your husband has been very just toward me, and I know his situation, and thank him. He could do no other but what he has done. I have appealed to Caesar, in Rome, for consideration of my case, as I am a Roman citizen. The Procurator, Felix, dispatched my appeal at once.” He smiled at her. “I find here some rest and peace, and have time for meditation, and my health, sorely depleted, is being restored, so I know it is God’s Will that I be here, so that I will be worthy of the battlefield again.”

  Drusilla nodded. “It is a sensible thought,” she said. She hesitated, and then said, “You are a Nazarene. Tell me of your belief. Do you truly believe that the Messias had already been on earth in our flesh, that He died for our sins, and sits now at the right Hand of the Father?”

  Saul’s heart quickened. He led Drusilla to a bench under a great green tamarisk tree, where it was cooler, and he sat down beside her. Again he told her the old story of his vision, but to him it was eternally new, it had just occurred, he was still in transports, still overcome with joy and rapture and wonder.

  Drusilla had fixed her eyes intently on his face as she listened, and then those eyes, so hard and so shrewd, softened with tears as Saul spoke—and it had been many years since her last tears—and her soul was profoundly moved, and she said in herself, “Truly, this man speaks truth.”

  He recounted to her his earlier persecutions of the Christians, or Nazarenes, and then his missionary journeys, lightly jesting about his hardships, stonings and beatings. And she thought, “He is an intrepid man, of courage and valor, and such men are rare.”

  After he had fallen into silence Drusilla looked at the harbors, visible over the walls, and then at the incredible scarlet of the sunset filled with golden and green celestial sails and the red orb of Mars shining alone in the silent tumult of color. Looking with her, Saul said, “‘The Heavens declare His glory, and the firmament shows His handiwork!’”

  “Blessed be His Name,” said Drusilla. She wanted to weep and did not know why, and her heart, so realistic and so desiccated, swelled as if with spring moisture.

  “
Rabbi,” she said in a voice her husband would not have recognized, “I must consider these strange things which you have told me.” And then she wondered at herself, and why she was so shaken. She rose slowly and ponderously from the bench, and she walked to the walls in silence with Saul beside her, and they gazed together at the awesome spectacle of the sky and the sea, which was stained red by the sunset, and the vastness of the water. The huge tumbled rocks which divided the two harbors were wet, and the scarlet light made them run as if with blood. A wind arose from the land and it was scented with resin and dust and fertile fields and grapes.

  Saul said in a low voice, quoting from the prophet, “‘For Sion’s sake I shall not be silent. For Jerusalem’s sake, I shall not rest.’”

  Drusilla bowed her head—that round big head—and prayed also, as she had not prayed since she was a girl. Then she looked at Saul and said, “You must tell me more, on another occasion, and perhaps my husband will listen also, for he is inclined to good will toward you, Saul of Tarshish.” Suddenly she smiled, and brilliantly, and her face was the face of a maiden, and her plain thick features became beautiful.

  “It is nonsense,” said Felix, yawning at the table expansively, for his wife had prepared the dinner herself with cunning and with spices and with wine sauces, to please him and to soften his belligerence; “But it is a very fair story, and full of mystery. I am not like many Romans, denying the gods. But another god would be redundant.”

  “There is but one God,” said Drusilla, deftly refilling his wine goblet. (As he was frugal and bought only the cheapest of wines, she had ordered a delicious old wine for him from the marketplace, and her own thrifty soul winced at the price.)

  “Nonsense,” repeated Felix and lifted the goblet to his lips, and he smacked them. “The local wine is improving. How could it be possible that one God could rule not only the world but all the universes beyond it? He would have to employ lesser gods, and goddesses, so you see how ridiculous it is when you claim there is but one God. He would never rest.”

  “‘He who guards Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,’” quoted Drusilla.

  Felix shook his head and chuckled. “I thought I had made a good Roman of you,” he said. Drusilla gave him another sweetmeat of delicate pastry filled with poppy seeds and dates. Felix chewed on it thoughtfully and with appreciation. “Still, there is too much for one God.”

  “He has angels and archangels,” said Drusilla.

  Felix smacked his hand on the table with triumph. “So! Auxiliary gods and goddesses!”

  “It is not the same,” said Drusilla. “Your prisoner, Paul of Tarsus, has a wondrous tongue and is full of stories, like all Jews. Let your girls alone for an afternoon and talk with him, and it is as if another Jeremias—or Homer—speaks.”

  Felix uttered a rude and cynical word. Then he said, “I love poetry, for does not our Emperor, Nero, love it also?” He grinned at Drusilla. “I shall avail myself of the pleasure your poet, Paul of Tarsus, offers—if there are not spies about to report to that abominable High Priest, Ananias, who will not be satisfied with anything save Paul’s death. Nor do I wish to incur the wrath of King Agrippa.”

  But that night the healthy and robust Drusilla became gravely ill, and fell into delirium. Frightened slave girls rushed to the Procurator in the morning, as did the two family physicians, one a Greek, one an Egyptian. “Lord!” cried the Greek, “we have tended the Lady Drusilla all through the night but now she is at the point of death and we can do no more!”

  Important Jews and Romans from Jerusalem were consulting with Felix this morning, and his atrium was crowded with them, and there was also two letters from Rome, sealed with Imperial seals. His scribes were at hand, busily recording the meeting, and Felix had been in the midst of a diatribe when his slaves and the Greek and Egyptian burst in upon him, without warning. They knew of his burly devotion to the Lady Drusilla, and had not sent a messenger first, imploring an interview.

  He started up, his full dark eyes aghast. He cried, “I did not know she was stricken!” He forgot the impatient visitors, who were glancing meaningly at each other.

  “She begged us not to disturb you in the night,” said the Greek, “and we obeyed, and then she became insensible.” The household revered Drusilla and respected her, and many loved her for her abrupt kindnesses and justice. Both physicians began to weep and wring their hands. “Only the gods can save her now,” said the Egyptian.

  Felix uttered imprecations concerning the gods, and both Jew and Roman were appalled. Then the Procurator, as if throwing them off also, flung off his robes of office and ran from the atrium to the women’s quarters of his beautiful house, which had been built for Pontius Pilate by King Herod.

  Drusilla’s bed chamber was hot and dim, for the velvet curtains had been drawn over the windows, and she lay sweating in her death agony on the bed, and her tangled black hair was strewn in feverish disarray over the pillows, which were silken and of many colors. She lay sprawled and heedless, her fat round body clothed only in a night garment of white linen; her thick white limbs were constantly convulsed. She breathed with a deep croaking, far down in her throat, and her enormous bosom struggled for breath, and her hands grasped and clutched at the blankets in torment. The big plain face was distorted with pain, and the black eyes stared blankly, or rolled, and her swollen tongue was thrust through her wet gray lips.

  Felix fell on his knees beside the bed and tried to take one of his wife’s hands, but she tore the hot flesh from his grasp. “Drusilla!” he cried. “My beloved wife, Drusilla!” The heat in the chamber was past bearing. Despite the scent of flowers in the room there was already the sickly sweet stench of death, and Felix, who had been a soldier, recognized it at once and the bristling hair on his head rose in terror and his heart seemed to stop. He burst into tears, and beat his forehead with his clenched fists, and then he glared at his physicians and almost screamed, “If you do not save her, you will die!”

  “Lord,” said the Egyptian, “I am a physician and so am a citizen of Rome. I am not a slave. The Lady Drusilla is in extremis, and we have done our best, and if that is not enough, it is the will of Ptah that she die.”

  “You and your accursed gods!” howled Felix. “What do I care for your gods, or mine? They do not exist! To whom can I appeal then, but to you, you worthless swine who cannot save my wife!” He was beside himself. He swung his head back and forth on the pillows beside his wife, and then he began to groan, and he flung his arm over the tossing body of Drusilla.

  “Sweetheart,” he said. “You are more to me than life, for all your tongue and your admonitions and your extravagance. You gave me no sons, but ten sons are not worth your life, Carissima. Do you not know me, your husband, Felix? Do you not love me? Will you leave me desolate? Have mercy, my beloved. Have mercy!”

  It seemed to the Roman that Drusilla was not only his wife, but his mother and his daughter and, above all, his dearest friend, for did she not console him constantly and advise him wisely and with rough tenderness, and then hold him in her arms in sympathy?

  Drusilla did not respond to his caresses and his words. The deep and vibrating croak in her throat and breast increased, and there was an ominous rattling. Felix, in spite of his disbelief, began to invoke Asclepius and his daughter, Hygeia, and Apollo and Mercury and Chilon, not to mention his patron, Mars, whom he loved above all the others. Around him stood the wailing slave women and the physicians. The Egyptian lifted Drusilla’s fat wrist in his fingers, then bent and listened to her heart. He whispered to the Greek, “She is dying, or is dead.” The heat in the chamber increased. Drusilla’s sweat ran from her like gray water. Her eyes opened widely, and fixed themselves on the painted ceiling, and did not blink.

  Felix uttered the wildest threats and imprecations, shaking his fists, as he knelt, and promising torture and death to those about him if Drusilla was not saved. The physicians shrugged, but they were uneasy. These Romans were capable of anything, in their unseemly
wrath and arrogance.

  It was then that a slave woman, bowing and terrified, approached the kneeling Felix and said in a quaking voice, “Lord, there is a rabbi in Herod’s Hall, who is reputed to have raised the dead and to cure the desperately ill. Send for him at once, I implore you.”

  “That superstitious and condemned Jew?” cried the Egyptian, looking about him with umbrage and with lacerated pride. He drew himself up; his thin black beard pointed in the air.

  “That Nazarene!” exclaimed the Greek. “Is he not already dead?” His rounded features expressed his contempt.

  But Felix was gazing at the slave woman with stretched and glittering eyes. “Send for him at once!” he shouted. “Make haste! Call the overseer of the hall!”

  The slave woman fled. The physicians approached Felix with pleading and outstretched hands. “No Jewish mountebank, with incantations, can save the Lady Drusilla,” they said. “Let him not profane her deathbed. See! She is already moribund; she is drawing her last breath.”

  And then indeed Drusilla gave a last loud cry, shuddered in all her parts as if a decapitating ax had struck her, convulsed all her limbs, and then collapsed on the pillows and on the bed. Her flesh immediately seemed to dwindle, to become less, as the inhabitant within had left and there was nothing remaining but a shell.

  Felix uttered a howling and discordant cry, and grasped her hand and kissed it madly, and wept with meanings, like a tortured child. He writhed; he clutched; he incoherently implored all the gods he had ever known or had heard of by repute. He threatened; he gasped; it was as if he were dying, himself.

  The physicians dared not even approach the deathbed, for fear of an attack on them by Felix, in his ferocious despair. They wanted to close the dead woman’s eyes, to compose her thrown limbs in a more seemly fashion, to draw the sheet over her head. But they were afraid of this mad man. The slave women began the long lamentation for the dead, kneeling about on the floor and bowing their heads. The physicians exchanged miserable glances. Only the unfortunate Drusilla was silent and motionless. A stabbing ray of hot sun struck through the aperture between the draperies, and it lay on Drusilla’s quiet and staring face, and somewhere there was the ominous buzz of marauding flies, scenting death, and the murals on the walls, of many colors, appeared to move with a life of their own, crawling silently. Felix, weeping without restraint, dropped his head beside that of his wife, and embraced her fiercely, and called to her in many endearing words as if to halt her spirit. Over and over he implored her not to leave him. Of what use was his life without her? His voice, wheedling, coaxing, became that of a little boy, cajoling his mother, a frightened and terrified voice, and the physicians dropped their eyes or looked aside, in embarrassment. Men did not implore the dead. The Roman was lesser in their eyes now, yet more terrible, for his emotions were capricious, and they thought his grief both an exaggeration and excessive.