Saul Of Tarsus Part 53

"If it please thee, good sir, we have left the discussion of the talents. It is the lady who concerns us now. I would be plain with thee; I should reproach myself did I let her proceed out of my house."

"Call the lady," Flaccus commanded. "We will lay the matter before her."

"She sleeps," Lydia said.

"I bring her more relief than sleep," was the blunt reply. "Bring her hither."

"On one promise," Lydia said.

"What?"

"That I and my servants alone shall accompany her to Rome."

Flaccus gazed straight at the alabarch's daughter. Lysimachus sat without movement. He knew that his daughter had seen at once that which he had instantly divined--that Flaccus had no intention of sending Cypros to Rome.

"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans thereafter."

Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her--doubtless before Flaccus, with unimaginable results. The alabarch looked down on his daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited for her answer.

"My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our a.s.sociations with thee and this unfortunate family long enough. Perchance we erred.

At best it may no longer be maintained. Though the Lady Cypros is uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the pa.s.sage back of Rannu's Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth to do with his princess."

There was silence. Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's curls.

"Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou hast kept thy arms concealed. Yet I will take them up, now." He raised his eyes to Flaccus.

"Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?"

After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more than ever composed.

"Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked.

"Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of the honor of their women."

"I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply. "I am only diverted.

But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon the Regio Judaeorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a protector or a roof-tree. She had much better go--to Rome!"

He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the alabarch could conduct him to the door.

Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other. Their thoughts reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the results of the climax. Then the alabarch opened his arms to his daughter and she slipped down on his breast.

"Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned of this?" he urged.

It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source of her information than to the information itself.

"I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he pretended to love, before the world!"

"What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of many evils had stunned her resourcefulness.

"Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded.

"And then?"

"Fight! He can invent twenty excuses to take Cypros from me by law and against her will."

"Then we must hide her and speedily!"

The alabarch thrust his old waxen fingers into his white locks.

"Now who will imperil himself by giving her asylum?" he pondered.

Lydia looked up after a little thought.

"The Nazarenes," she ventured timidly.

"What! The apostates! The community is the most perilous spot in Egypt!"

"Here in Alexandria, of a truth," Lydia hurried on eagerly, "but thou knowest by report that they have spread abroad among rustics and shepherds as a running vine. Many are living about over the Delta.

One of them will shelter her, I know. She will go when we have told her what threatens, nor fail to flourish on their rough fare, since she hath made her bed by the roadways, and had her bread from the hands of wayside mendicants!"

The alabarch arose and set her on her feet.

"Haste, then, Lydia; no time is to be lost!"

But before she reached the threshold of the archway she turned back and came slowly to him, closer and closer, until she raised her arms and put them about his neck.

"Father!" she whispered, "we need have fear of Cla.s.sicus."

The pallor on the old man's face quivered like the reflection of a shaken light.

"He is jealous," he answered, "of Marsyas! Hath he cause, my daughter?"

Lydia dropped her head on the alabarch's breast.

"Marsyas is an Essene!" she whispered, and the alabarch smoothed her curls and was filled with pity.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE PROCONSUL'S DELIBERATIONS

Before sunset that day, Flaccus had received two messages. One was brought by a Jewish slave. It read:

"TO FLACCUS AVILLUS, PROCONSUL OF EGYPT, GREETING:

"I have departed.