Stephen Part 34

On the morrow a great crowd had a.s.sembled about the prison which held the four who were condemned to public scourging and to death; for evil tidings travel fast, and there is ever an ign.o.ble mult.i.tude who reckon as high holiday a spectacle of human agony.

Yet there were those who looked in one another's faces with sombre and despairing eyes. "The last days are at hand," they murmured, "the days of wrath and of burning. For shall not G.o.d avenge his own elect which cry day and night unto him? Yea, he will avenge them, and that right speedily." But still the sun poured down with impartial splendor, gilding alike the gloomy walls of the blood-stained prison, and the yellow curls of the year-old babe. And the placid heaven gave no sign of the invisible hosts of glory behind its azure wall.

Exactly at the third hour, Saul accompanied by a strong guard approached the prison. His face was pale and haggard, but upon it was stamped a look of savage determination before which the mob fell back with a dull low murmur.

The governor of the prison greeted him with manifest joy. "The prisoners which thou didst commit to my charge are safe--quite safe, my lord," he said, rubbing his hands. "We had no visions; neither angels, earthquakes, nor demons. We are----"

"Fetch them forth," said Saul, with a peremptory gesture and a fierce look at the jailer, before which that functionary drew back with an apologetic obeisance.

"Yes, certainly, at once, my wors.h.i.+pful lord; just as soon as we shall be able to undo the chains. Here you," he roared, addressing the turnkey, "fetch the four from the inner prison."

So presently the condemned came forth into the prison yard, and stood before Saul. Their faces were calm, even joyful, and the Pharisee ground his teeth as he looked at them.

"Hast thou counted the cost of thy perverseness?" he said abruptly.

"We have counted the cost," replied Mary of Nazareth in a firm voice, "and the reward is exceeding glorious above all that it hath entered into the heart of man to imagine."

"Thinkest thou so?" answered Saul. "Those of thy company may be of a better mind. Take heed to what I shall say," he added, turning to the other three. "The Sanhedrim is full of mercy and compa.s.sion; and while it will without faltering carry on the work which it hath undertaken of cleansing and purifying Israel of this monstrous and blasphemous belief in a perished malefactor, it also offers pardon freely to all who confess and forsake the error of their ways. If now at this last hour ye will acknowledge that the Nazarene was an impostor inspired by the father of lies; that he justly died the accursed death; that his body moreover was stolen by his followers from out the tomb in which it was buried, for the express purpose of confirming this accursed blasphemy; if ye shall now make confession of these things, it is the merciful mandate of them which are in authority that ye be immediately released without further scathe or punishment. Ye have heard. Wilt thou, maiden, so confess, thereby securing to thyself bodily safety and the blessing of the Almighty?"

There was a breathless silence for an instant, then Anat raised her large dark eyes to the face of the Pharisee. "Sir, I have heard thy offer of safety, and this is my answer. I believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, because I who was once blind now see; I believe that he was put to death upon the cross that he might draw all men unto him and heal them from their sins, even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness that the stricken Israelites might look and be saved; I believe that he arose from among the dead on the third day, and is set down forever at the right hand of G.o.d. These things I do affirm and believe in this the last hour of my mortal life."

"Thou art condemned," said Saul slowly, but his face was more white than the face of the maiden.

"Young man," he said, turning to Seth, "wilt thou confess to the things which I have already enumerated, that thou mayest live out thy days in peace?"

"I cannot deny him on whom I have believed, even for the sake of life--and life is sweet," faltered Seth, on whom the shadow had lain very heavily all the night.

"Thou art condemned," repeated Saul in a hollow voice.

"Woman, who by reason of thine exalted birth shouldst have remained a mother in Israel, wilt thou renounce these vile errors after which thou hast strayed? In so renouncing thou shalt find again a father's, a husband's forgiveness and favor. For so I am bidden to say unto thee."

Anna trembled and was silent.

"Dost thou so acknowledge thy sin?" said Saul; and it seemed to them that listened that there was a note of entreaty in his stern voice.

"G.o.d of my fathers!" cried the wife of Caiaphas, looking up into the dazzling blue of the sky. "Help me to know without shadow of doubt what is truth; and enable me to witness to it without faltering." Then she turned to Saul. "Tell my husband and my father, that the forgiveness and favor of G.o.d is rather to be desired than the forgiveness and favor of any mortal, however beloved. I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah of Israel; and if I must now die for that belief, I die willingly."

Saul bowed his head without speaking. "Close up about the prisoners,"

he commanded the guard, who had stood silent witnesses of the scene, "and conduct them to the place of punishment."

Abu Ben Hesed had not been idle during the hours which had pa.s.sed since he had seen the prisoners disappear behind the closed door of the judgment hall. He had followed them to the prison; and from a temple underling who was not insensible to the glitter of gold as seen through the fingers of the desert chief, he had made s.h.i.+ft to find out the number of guards, the strength of the walls and the general plan of the prison.

"A safe prison, truly," he said to his informant, as the gold changed hands--neither apparently being aware of the transaction.

"Safe as the tomb," a.s.sented the temple official, slyly rubbing the coin with a corner of his robe. "Once within yonder walls, a man is seen no more till he is fetched out." Then he fell to eying the hand of Ben Hesed, fancying that he again saw there a gleam of something yellow. He was not mistaken; and his face grew proportionately genial as a second coin joined the first in his own greedy palm.

"I am but lately arrived in Jerusalem," said Ben Hesed, "and have as yet not witnessed the punishment of any of these apostates. 'Twere a goodly sight to see a blasphemer suffer?"

"Ay, a goodly sight. I have seen many. Man, but they be obstinate!

Wouldst thou witness a grand spectacle, then be without the Damascus Gate to-morrow. 'Twill be in the very place where they stoned the pestilent Gentile, Stephen."

"They will stone only the man, I suppose?" said Ben Hesed with apparent unconcern.

"They will scourge all four--forty stripes save one," and the fellow smacked his lips in antic.i.p.ation. "I myself am to handle one of the scourges, and I understand the business as none other in Jerusalem. I can fetch the blood every time; thou wilt see." And he winked at Ben Hesed, and cautiously clinked the gold pieces with the air of a man who is at peace with himself and all the world.

Ben Hesed could with difficulty keep his hands from the throat of the wretch.

"After the scourging, the Sanhedrim will give them one more chance to renounce their evil beliefs," continued the official, "a mere form, for they are all as stubborn as the father of lies himself. A few stones will suffice to finish them. So perish all who blaspheme the law!"

"I shall be there," declared Ben Hesed. "Ah, stay, should they change the hour and place bring me word, and I will recompense thee with as much again as thou hast already in thy hand. I am not minded to lose the sight. Thou wilt find me encamped just without the Damascus Gate."

"I will bring thee word, son of Abraham, I swear it by the veil of the Temple. Peace be with thee."

An hour later Ben Hesed held a council of war in his camp. "We cannot take the prison," he said, drawing his heavy brows together. "For they would straightway rouse the Romans at the citadel, which is but a stone's throw from the outer wall of the place. We must wait till they fetch them out to-morrow, and may the Almighty give us the wisdom and the strength which we need. Ay, and he will give it," he added, his eye flas.h.i.+ng fire. "It is ever the pleasure of Jehovah to show forth his power by the hand of the few, even as by the hand of Gideon with three hundred men he overthrew the hosts of the Midianites and Amalekites, which were as the gra.s.shoppers for mult.i.tude."

Then directed he the twelve men who were with him after what manner they should do on the morrow, and every man of them lay down and slept. But Ben Hesed slept not all the night, for he prayed mightily unto G.o.d that he would deliver them which were persecuted out of the hand of the destroyer; and he prayed also for him that was wasting the church, that his eyes might be opened. At the coming of the dawn he also laid down for a s.p.a.ce, for he said, "I will both lay me down in peace and sleep; for thou Lord only makest me to dwell in safety. The Lord will save the afflicted people, he will give me the necks of his enemies, for G.o.d is a G.o.d of great deliverances."

Very early the people began to pour out from the Damascus Gate, that they might secure good places for the seeing. They brought with them food and drink also, that they might make merry. Ben Hesed looked at them and he waxed exceeding angry.

"Behold!" he said, "these dwellers in the holy city are come out as to a holiday, with laughing and feasting. They are become as the dwellers in Sodom, and as the inhabitants of the earth before the flood, for they delight themselves in blood and in violence. They make merry and eat and drink to-day, but the days shall come wherein they shall mourn and cry aloud, and their tears shall be their meat day and night."

As the third hour drew nigh, the people began to crane their necks toward the gate through which the condemned were to come forth, and they grew impatient and murmured as the moments dragged by.

"What now if they have already confessed?" said one woman. "We shall have put ourselves to this trouble for naught. Nay, but I believe that they have confessed."

"Mayhap," said her neighbor, "but I shall not give up the matter before noon, now that I am here. Verily," she added with a shrug, "I am glad now that I did not go over to their number; I came near it once when the man Peter preached in our street that their Messiah would come back and that right speedily. If what they tell about the Nazarene being alive were true, he would certainly come in these days." Then they fell to gossiping in neighborly fas.h.i.+on about their husbands, the linen that they had spun, and the preparations for the approaching feast-day, stopping suddenly to listen as a loud and ever growing murmur of sound arose from within the gates.

"They are coming!" cried the mult.i.tude as with one voice.

"They are coming!" said Ben Hesed, tightening his grasp on the strong bow upon which he was leaning. The little band of fourteen men had established themselves on a rocky eminence directly above the spot where the scourging was to take place, well screened from observation by a tangle of low-growing shrubs.

The procession, headed by a strong detachment of temple guards, soon came in sight, the prisoners heavily chained walking two by two. Behind them followed a number of Sanhedrists, among whom the women pointed out to one another the famous Saul of Tarsus, as second only in interest to the condemned prisoners.

"They do say," whispered one, "that he enters without ceremony into the houses wherein dwell them that believe on the Nazarene, and that he drags them forth to prison and to death without mercy."

"That is true," returned her neighbor. "I chanced to be in the house of Mary when he came there--for as thou knowest, she was a kind soul, whatever her sins, and ready always to lend from her store for the convenience of them that lacked--indeed one might say as much of them all."

"And how didst thou escape?"

"I simply repeated what the man bade me, without ado; but I had like to have fainted. How I reached my home afterward I scarce know; my husband hath forbidden me to speak with any of them hereafter--though G.o.d knows the command was needless. But see! They are about to bind them to the posts for the scourging." At the next breath the speaker screamed aloud in terror, grasping her neighbor by the arm. A swift something had smitten the man who was advancing to lay hold on Mary of Nazareth, and with a wild yell of agony he leapt high into the air, falling stone dead at his victim's feet.

Before the startled mult.i.tude had time to recover themselves, a very whirlwind of destruction, savage, swift, merciless, had swept down upon them from the rocky eminence above their heads, the wild battle-cry of the desert sounding in their guilty ears like the trumpet call of the last day. And the people fled from before it in a frenzy of mad fear, running, stumbling, falling, the strong trampling the weak under foot, amid a wild tumult of shrieks, curses and entreaties to G.o.d to spare them.

The temple guard, encouraged by the ringing voice of Saul of Tarsus, made at the first some faint show of resistance, then they too turned and fled for their lives.

"Cowards!" shouted Saul angrily; "there are but a handful of them."