V
In consideration of great services rendered to the Empire, the ex-Prætor of the Egyptian Taxes was beheaded without torture. The body, exposed upon the public execution-ground according to the law, mysteriously disappeared. It was whispered that it had been spirited away by persons with Christian leanings, and secretly buried in the crypt of some unknown church.
For three days following the death of his patron, the house of Hazaël was strictly closed.... The Jew, with hair and beard sprinkled with ashes, mourned, sitting on the floor in a coarse black tunic, rent at the hem; and observing silence, ate bread and drank water once a day at the sunset hour. He even said Kaddish for his dead benefactor, though an act so presumptuous would have scandalised the Rabbinate. On the fourth day he rose: washed and reclothed himself, and returned to his family as though nothing had transpired. But on a day following the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, the large white mule on which Hazaël made his journeys, with the beast that usually carried his attendant Ephraim, stood waiting with the pack-mule at the Chief Secretary's door.
A long basket of woven osiers now being brought out by Ephraim and another servant, and carefully strapped upon the burden of necessaries carried by the pack-mule, the Chief Secretary, armed as before, and in the plain travelling garb that he had worn previously, bade farewell to his wife and family; thrust his mighty bronze-shod staff once more into its leathern bucket; and rode out of the City of the Pharos with his small following, by the Gate of the Moon.
A flat-bottomed boat paddled by four negroes, conveyed both men and beasts across the vineyard-fringed Lake of Mareotis, and for some miles south-eastwards along the Canal of Alexandria, between palm-groves, gardens, orchards and the estates of wealthy Greeks, Egyptians and Roman officials. Above Andron, the ancient city fast falling through Roman misrule into neglect and dilapidation, the party landed; Hazaël gave money to the master of the rowers, received his salutations, and the four negroes, reversing their positions, soon conveyed the boat away.
Then the Jew, no longer hiding the anxiety that had devoured him, leaped with fierce energy upon the pack-mule, unstrapped the heavy osier basket and with the aid of Ephraim, carefully lowered it to the ground. With shaking hands he unfastened the lid of the pannier, and as the smiling but bewildered face of a boy of twelve years old looked up at him, with blue eyes blinking in the sudden glare of the sun:
"Now thanks be to the Holy One that all is well with thee!" he stammered. "Not a word, not a movement—your father's true son! See now—this pad from under thy head, my hands beneath thy armpits. Leap—and fresh as a salmon from the British Thamesis—a sturgeon from the Hyperborean Ocean, or a lamprey from Lake Moeris—out you come!"
He hugged the boy against his breast with almost womanly tenderness, and running his hands rapidly over the slight body, assured himself that all was well. Then mounting Florens before the saddle of his own mule, and followed by Ephraim with the other animals; the Secretary, following a southward-running road that crossed some ripening cotton-fields, presently drew the rein, and looked back at Ephraim, saying:
"The idolaters are true to their word. See, there are their tents and camels!"
And he pointed to where low black tents were pitched upon a stretch of scrubby ground lying between the crop-land and the reddish-coloured desert, upon which camels eagerly grazed upon withered vetch and wiry grasses; while a small band of Saracens crouched round a small fire, wrapped in capacious mantles woven of white wool and black camel's hair, their loaded staves beside them, and sharp broad-bladed spears planted haft downwards in the ground near by.
The Saracens rose, seeing men on beasts coming, seized their staves and plucked forth their spears. Then, comprehending who it was that approached, their demeanour altered, and they received the Jew with respect.
"I am Mafa Oabu," said the eldest of the company. "If evil come to thee, or those who are thy companions, I pay to him whom thou knowest, with my life and the lives of my sons!"
He touched himself with the right hand upon the breast and brow, and laid his hands in the hands of Hazaël, as also did the men of his following. Three young camels were chosen for the travellers to ride. Two others were loaded with the water-skins, provisions, fodder, and baggage. Mafa Oabu mounted one of the pack-animals. Two strong young men, marching with the caravan, would ride by turns upon the other, the old Saracen said, when either of them required rest. As for the mules, they remained in the keeping of the Saracens, to be reclaimed upon the return of the travellers. The price of the journey, not to be paid until then, was to be one hundred silver sestertii a day for each of the five camels; fifty sestertii for Mafa Oabu, and a gift for each of the young men.
The departure was accompanied by shrill ululating cries made by the women of the Saracens, who kept veiled their faces, painted like their naked bodies with green and scarlet fishes, serpents and the signs of the Zodiac, and smeared their hair with butter. Then the caravan struck southwards into the Nitrian Desert. That night they encamped under a grove of palm-trees, near a Roman well hollowed in the living rock, amidst the bellowings of the camels, which purposely had not been watered before the start.
Water-skins brought by the Jews being filled by Ephraim, that the pure element might not be contaminated by the touch of idolaters, the Saracens filled their own, and drew water for the camels, which was given the thirsty beasts in a pitch-smeared skin trough. Mafa Oabu took no share in these labours, but prostrating himself upon the sand with his forehead towards the setting sun, remained absorbed in silent adoration. The Jews washed, gave thanks and ate; sharing with the child the bread, eggs, figs and dried fish they had brought with them; drinking a little wine diluted with water, and keeping their own side of the fire. The Saracens washed down their sparing diet of dried bread, dates and sheeps'-milk cheese with a drink of charred corn, crushed, and boiled in water mingled with honey, which they sipped from the shells of young tortoises, showing their white teeth in smiles at the hearty appetite displayed by the child. Yet while the novelty of all about him pleased and excited Florens, he would pause in the midst of a mouthful to ask Hazaël:
"When we reach where we are going, shall we find my father there?"
"If the Almighty so wills!" was the Jew's invariable answer. The young Saracens, whose names were Marduk and Belias, pitched a black tent to shelter the travellers, when sleeping, from the rays of the new moon. Small, marvellously bright and silvery, it hung high in the south, rivalling the blue radiance of Jupiter, the evening star.... In the north-west the Pharos of Alexandria blazed on the horizon at intervals of an instant. Hazaël looked at the distant splendour of the city, and muttered, as he thought of his benefactor murdered there:
"But for the Chosen, and my Miriam and my children, who dwell in the shadow of thy painted temples like to doves among the rocks, I could wish that fire and brimstone might descend from Heaven and consume thee utterly, thou thrice accursed Harlot of the Sea!"
For in the bosom of the Jew, who had witnessed massacres of Christians without a sentiment of pity or horror, the commission of that single crime had caused a strange revulsion. Before he lay down, he looked at the boy, who wearied, was soundly sleeping; and a heavy tear dropped from his stern eyes upon the woollen covering he held back. Then he replaced it over the tossed curls and the flushed face of the sleeper, commended himself to the Almighty care, and stretched himself upon the ground beside Florens.
Rising to repeat the Shema for the first night-watch, he stepped outside the tent to leave to Ephraim, who had also wakened, the freedom of solitude which intensifies prayer. The young Saracens slept beside the pink embers of the fire, enveloped in their mantles of camel's hair. Mafa Oabu did not sleep, but sat apart, alert and wakeful; spear at hand and staff in readiness; his sling lying beside him, with a supply of rounded stones.
Placing ten small pebbles in front of him, he reckoned that ten days must pass before the arrival of the caravan at Memphis. Adding ten more for the return-journey, he surrounded each of the twenty pebbles with five hundred grains of maize, reckoning up his gains by the light of the moon and of the fire—which he often fed with dead wood and dried camel's-dung—regularly discovering to his chagrin that he had not added the sum due for his own labours, and must begin once more. When the stars began to pale towards the dawn, he ceased, and prostrated himself, rising to find Hazaël standing near.
"What do you worship?" the Jew asked him.
"We pray," said Mafa Oabu, "to the Great and Lesser Lights, to the starry Hosts of Heaven and to the Djinns and Afrits both good and evil, that eavesdrop at the celestial gates and thereby learn much of the divine plans of Allah, the Eternal, the Creator of All. The brilliant lights that sometimes shoot across the sky are in fact these beings, driven by the Angels from the celestial threshold, whence their master Iblis, the Peacock of the Angels, was banished when he rebelled against Allah. We also reverence as the holiest thing from Kaf to Kaf, the pure white stone that fell with our father Adam from the Garden of Paradise. It is now no longer white, having wept so much for the sins of the world, and silver bands prevent it from bursting. It is imbedded in the wall of the Kaaba, the Holy House containing more than three hundred and fifty images, built and carved by Seth, son of Adam, and washed away by the Deluge. Later, Ishmael, guided by the Archangel Gabriel, discovered the marvellous stone, buried in the mud left by the retreating waters, and made new images in place of those lost. We call the period at which these events occurred, The Time of Ignorance. You, my lord, being of the People of the Book, the Sons of Isaac, look back with ourselves—the People of the Desert who are the Children of Ishmael—to Abraham, our common ancestor."
"So it is said," observed Hazaël, unwilling to offend the master of the caravan, while he turned aside to spit upon the sand, making a mental act abjuring kinship with idolaters, condemned by the Almighty to burn forever in hell.
VI
Keeping to the south, they passed that day through some long-neglected orchards, lying upon the outskirts of a town almost in ruins, sparsely inhabited by a degraded population of mingled Greek, Egyptian and Libyan blood. Satyrs and fauns in the fig-groves pelted them with ripe fruit in return for a volley of stones thrown by the Saracens.
"What are they?" asked Florens of Hazaël, puzzled at the sight of these strange semi-human beings, sprung from the iniquities of forgotten peoples; covered with hide, and having horses' ears and tails, or goatish horns and hairy legs, ending in cloven hoofs. But Hazaël muffled the child's eyes and dragged him roughly away.
The groves of the dying city left behind, the ground became rugged, bare and stony. That night the camels grazed upon the safsaf weed, after the next they might have to rely upon the fodder they carried. A milky mirage made the scrub-bushes of the distant plain appear as tall as sycamores. Passing through them, they barely reached the knees of the Saracens who went on foot. White snails covered them, glistening like some strange pale fruit amidst their foliage. These the young Saracens gathered and threw into a bag with salt. Thus purged, they explained, these snails were excellent eating either roasted in the ashes or stewed.
On their left as they travelled, a pearly haze tinged with jade-green signified the vegetation of the banks of the Nile. Ranges of low hills in the south were vested in violet, and palest primrose. The sun smote fiercely, yet when the shadows of men and beasts were shortest, the children of the Desert, as though enlivened by the burning atmosphere, quickened their steps and those of the camels and even began to sing. They passed through part of a petrified forest, the thickest trunks of the stone trees being of the girth of a man's thigh. A herd of gazelle broke from covert, Mafa Oabu slung a stone after them, and a doe followed by a young fawn fell with a broken leg. A Saracen slit the throat of the mother, and would have killed the fawn also, had not the boy Florens begged with tears that the little creature should be given into his care.
"It will die," said Hazaël, "without milk to nourish it!" And he signed to Ephraim, who took charge of the little creature, meaning to slaughter it after the ritual of his people, so that it might lawfully be used for food.
They passed Saracen grave-mounds and trains of camels, and rested at another well where were more camel-trains being loaded with iron vessels of water to carry into the Desert to the military outposts. Near the well was a fortress garrisoned by Roman legionaries. Roman officers driving chariots hailed the Jew, with whom they seemed acquainted, to ask the news from Alexandria. The moon rose early, and rode high before the caravan, as the blood-red disc of the sun sank into the invisible western sea. A mist rose from the burning ground about the legs of the Saracens and the camels, so that they seemed to wade through the waters of an opaque milky lake. That night the Saracens ate the meat of the doe-gazelle roasted on sticks before the fire, and drank boiled broth. And Ephraim killed the fawn, and dressed the meat in the Jewish way, saving the delicate dappled skin to make a belt and hanging purse for Florens. But even the promise of the belt did not pacify the boy.
"I would have reared it and tamed it too," he said, changing colour: "You are cruel!" Nor would he taste of the flesh of the fawn, nor had Hazaël, in concern for the boy's distress, any great appetite for Ephraim's cookery.
Dew did not drench the tents that night, nor soak the heavy striped mantles worn by the three Saracens. The breath of the Desert filled the lungs, the sun poured down like molten brass, the hard red ground ascended under the feet, and travelling became difficult, owing to ridges of petrified coral and banks of fossil shells and sponges. Urged by the whistling of the Saracens the camels exerted themselves painfully. This haste was of necessity, as the water began to thicken and grow murky in the goatskins. That night they rested three hours and travelled instead of sleeping. Before dawn they found the track they pursued wind among low broken hills, rising to jagged bluffs and full of yawning chasms. When the day broke, they perceived on looking back, these low hills magnified by a mirage to a towering range of mountains. Florens cried out in wonder. But the old Saracen made signs that the boy should be silent, as Djinni, Afrits and phantoms of the Desert inhabited the chasms, and resented the presence of beings of the human race. Skeletons of camels, and the mummy-dry bodies of men were found upon the track they followed. Mafa Oabu said that these were the remains of travellers who had offended the Djinns.
Now they descended a steep ravine, the sides of which were clothed with petrified forests. The pass ended in desert, the hot reddish expanse of which, was broken by the glittering shield-shaped basin of a lake. This lake was salt, the Saracens explained by gestures, and the travellers, who sickened at the stench and taste of the putrid water in the goatskins, moistened their cracked lips with a few drops, and turned away their parching eyes from the tormenting sight.
At the bottom of the defile appeared now the white tents of a Roman outpost, the eagled standard set up under a little wooden penthouse, close to the quarters of the officer in command. A square wall of rocks enclosed the encampment, which was protected by an encircling trench. Not far off were seen camels feeding, and the low black tents of a tribe of nomads, of mingled Ethiopian and Arab race.
Now soldiers approached bringing water to the travellers, yellow and muddy and full of the larvae of flies. Filtered through a cloth, they drank of it eagerly. The soldiers were fever-smitten, and covered with scabs and swellings, from the stings of poisonous insects which swarmed amidst the herbage on the borders of the salt lake. Red fruit grew on tall thorny bushes, a thin fodder-grass showed with the safsaf upon the arid dunes. Springs of the brackish water were to be found here, by digging holes of six feet deep in the sandy gravel. Wild-duck haunted the lake-borders; those of the Roman soldiers who were bowmen, habitually shot the birds for a change of food. That night a black-and-white lamb, purchased by the Jew Hazaël from the camp of the Ethiopians, was sacrificed to the moon, and eaten by Mafa Oabu and his men.
They filled the water-skins with the turbid fluid, and left the Roman outpost by the salt lake on the following night. The heat grew fiercer towards daybreak. Waves of burning reddish gravel rose about them to the height of the head of a man. Mingled with the gravel were yellow crystals, perfectly spherical and glittering in the moonlight. The boy begged to be allowed to dismount and gather these stones, which the Saracens collected for the adornment of their women. To pacify Florens the Jew bought a handful or so from the young men.
They crossed a low range of broken hills, and at noon saw Mount Nitria and a mirage of two salt lakes. Pied birds of grey-and-white with long tails, appeared towards evening, feeding on minute winged insects that rose from the burning sand, and signalling to each other with sharp, whistling calls. Jackals howled during the hours of rest, and, looking back when they had quitted the place of their encampment, they saw it alive with these foul creatures of prey.
Now the ground became paved with slabs of shining mica. Bushes of wormwood, tamarisks and thorny shrubs with red fruit, eatable by men and greedily devoured by camels, grew in the friable red soil at the base of stony cliffs. Herds of gazelle grazed here. Hills shaped like cones with broken tops rose up on either side of them. Towering rocks of black basalt looked like giant Ethiopians menacing the caravan with uplifted clubs and spears. The full moon rose in radiance whilst the sun was sinking over the unseen western ocean, amid splendours of amber, topaz and ruby, sapphire and emerald.
They marched before day. The Libyan sun had never burned with fiercer intensity. For fear that the boy would swoon and fall from his camel, Hazaël transferred him to his own. The young Saracens ran by the wearied beasts, whistling to them to march in line,—singing songs and jesting clumsily to distract the thoughts of the wearied travellers. Hazaël said within himself:
"When upon the hump of an accursed camel I fry alive in the sun of Libya, shall I be solaced because a cricket chirps at the doorway of mine ear?" Yet he pretended to listen with pleasure, and bade the exhausted child take notice how the shadows of the Saracens gambolled beside them like black monkeys on the rocks. But the boy, feverish from the bites of the swarms of flies beside the salt lake, or sickened by the muddy water, drooped more and more. Sometimes he revived sufficiently to reiterate:
"Shall we really find my father when we reach the journey's end?"
Or he would vary the question by asking:
"Shall I have thy son Levi and thy little Leah to play with there?"
To which the Jew, tender as a woman, and fearful of increasing the child's distemper by thwarting him, would reply:
"If God willed it, thy father would be waiting to receive thee. If the All Highest commanded, thy playmates would be there also. All things are disposed and directed by the Almighty."
"Where is He?" the child asked. Hazaël answered:
"He is at the zenith and at the nadir. He encompasses the world with His fingers, and takes up His abode in the hearts of holy and pious men."
"May a little boy see Him? Shall I see Him?" the child queried.
And Hazaël answered, groaning in spirit at the thought of the eternal burnings destined for the soul of this innocent, who must be reared in the heresy of Christianity:
"The Cherubim gaze perpetually on Him, and know no weariness!"
The child seated on the pad before him, felt the heaving of his breast, turned in his supporting arms, and looked up into his gloomy countenance. Then, seeing the black brows, knotted over the bloodshot eyes, the strange convulsion that twisted the mouth, and the haggard temples and hollow cheeks bedabbled with sweat, Florens grew pale and stared at him in fear.
"Are you angry?" he faltered, and Hazaël forced his brows to unbend, and his lips to smile as he answered:
"Perhaps, but not with thee!"
"That is well," returned the boy, "for I would have you love me as much as you love Levi and little Leah!"
"Then be content," said Hazaël's deep voice, "for even as these do I love thee!"
Yet as he answered in gentle words, the spirit of some dark forefather who served Canaanitish idols with bloody rites ages before the Lawgiver received the Divine revelation upon the holy Mountain of God—tempted Hazaël to pluck away the sinewy arms that sustained the child in front of him—and let him fall to certain death upon the stones beneath the camel's feet.
VII
After another day's journey over stones and thorny scrub-bush, Mount Nitria and her ranges walled out the southern horizon, while the Pyramids of Memphis showed small upon the east. The ascent grew more steep, then the ground sloped down and the camels entered the Natrûn Valley. Here safsaf weed, tamarisk and thorn gave place to olives, vines and harvested fields, upon the drying straw of which, camels, black goats and numerous flocks of sheep were feeding. Presently the valley divided into two: at the bottom of one lay the salt lakes, at this time of the year but six in number. Beside the lakes dwelt colonies of salt-workers who cultivated fields of corn, vineyards and olive-trees along the banks of a waterless channel that had once, according to tradition, formed a branch of the Nile. In the bed of this vanished river, and where some of the lakes had dried up, huge bones of unknown creatures, encrusted with glittering saline crystals, projected from the salt-streaked mud. These, the Saracens said, were the remains of some terrible giants, sons of Eblis, Lord of the Djinni and master of the Afrits. Upon the further range of hills rose the temples, pylons, palaces and streets of Scete, an ancient city of the Egyptians, dedicated of old to the worship of Horus the hawk god. The suburbs to the east were inhabited by Greek and Copt salt-merchants, their families and their Libyan and negro labourers; but the magnificence of Scete lay abandoned to foxes, bats and owls.
The Saracen master of the camels believed this place to be the abode of evil Afrits, and pointing to some pillars of fine dust set whirling by a breeze that was blowing from the north-east across the deserted courtyards and huge empty squares:—
"See!" said Mafa Oabu to Hazaël, "how the Accursed Ones make sport here. Beyond those groves of columns topped with lotus-buds, within those vast palaces are halls where the Sons of Eblis sit on thrones, crowned and immovable with their stone hands resting upon their stony knees.... Women with the heads of cows, carrying the Moon between their horns, look down on them. Troops of peris carrying flowers and ornaments, men with the heads of hawks, crocodiles, and other creatures are limned on the walls.... At night they come to life, descend and serve the Sons of Eblis, who between moonset and cockcrow are released from their bonds of stone. But all the rest of the time the place is but the playground of the Afrits. Evil is certain to befall us if we pause to look on them!"
Right and left of Scete, on the shoulders of the hills, were chapels and rows of cells, wrought by Christian monks and hermits with infinite patience of labour out of the Cyclopean rock. Lower down a stream of pure water descending a rocky gorge, made fruitful the fields and vegetable gardens, the olive-groves and date-palms cultivated by the Solitaries and the "communities with tireless industry and patience; and manured by loads of rich black mud, transported on the backs of asses and of men from the banks of the distant Nile.
Beyond these fields and gardens stretched the great Libyan Desert. To the south the massive battlemented walls of the Monastery of Scete, backed by the distant mountain of the Cow, rose from the summit of a flat-topped mound of red gravel covered with black pebbles.
Seen near, this place resembled a fortress with loopholes pierced in its Cyclopean masonry. An ancient bronze shield depended by two rusty chains from the wall beside the low doorway, through which the venerable Abbot Melittus, with three monks and two novices, had been led away to Alexandria to suffer for Christ: and a stone hammer hung below the shield: but it was not possible to reach the door, because two millstones had been rolled into the entrance before it by the monks: who had then re-entered the monastery by means of a rope let down from a window above the door.
"Beat upon the shield!" Hazaël signed to one of the Saracens. The heathen obeyed, but so long the monks within delayed in answering the summons, that the child, suffering from fatigue, and fevered by the recent bites of the innumerable winged insects that swarmed in the neighbourhood of the salt lakes, began to cry.
This innocent clamour evoked the apparition of a bearded monk at the window over the doorway. After anxious scrutiny and much questioning, the monk vanished. A pale beardless face now appeared at the aperture, and a weak but singularly distinct voice addressed Hazaël:
"O Jew of Alexandria!" it said, "we have now no Abbot of Scete, until our Chapter nominate a successor to Melittus, who hath been called, with certain of the brethren, to reign with Jesus Christ. But for the present, I who am called Paule, serve as Brother Superior. Tell me, therefore, what you seek of us?"
"Nothing for myself nor my companions, O monk!" said Hazaël roughly, "but lodging for the night and tendance for this child, who is weary with travel, and somewhat feverish. He is the only son of Philoremus Florens Fabius, late Prætor of the Taxes of Egypt in Alexandria, who—"
"Let down the basket with Brother Theodore!" interrupted the thin voice of Paule.
Then as a deep basket of osiers, containing a pleasant-faced young monk, was let down from the window by a rope worked by windlass and pulley:
"O Jew, give Brother Theodore the child of the servant of Christ, Philoremus," said the weak voice of Paule. "Happy is the hour that brings us our martyred brother's son!"
Then, as the camel ridden by Hazaël knelt at a word from its Saracen driver, and the boy, whose tears had ceased to flow, willingly submitted to be taken in the arms of Brother Theodore; and even showed pleasure as the basket ascended with its burden through the air,—the Jew, unable to restrain his surprise that intelligence of the manner of the Prætor's death should have reached this distant place, motioned to the Superior that he wished to speak in private. And as the monks drew in the basket at the window, and Paule leaned out, the Jew asked:
"How can it be, O monk, that this was known to you?"
Paule looked down at him with luminous eyes, and answered:
"O faithful man! who for the sake of thine oath doest that which is abhorrent unto thee, didst thou not know that the great Saint, the Solitary of Derhor, rested here upon his way to Tabenna in the Thebaïd? Four days ago he left us, having seen in a vision the confession, the arrest and martyrdom by decapitation of the Prætor Philoremus Fabius!"
Hazaël said, striking his great metal-shod staff upon a millstone so violently that the sparks flew:
"Where now is this Saint of thine? Can a swift camel overtake one who seems to have not only the legs of the ostrich, but the eagle's wings? For I have a message for the man from my master!"
Paule asked, with his luminous eyes bent upon the contorted features of the Hebrew:
"Does the message concern the child?"
"Nay, monk, not so!" Hazaël answered, "for the boy is to be delivered to the Abbot of Tabenna with certain jewels which are to be sold for his keep." He added as great drops of sweat started again upon his cheeks and temples, and his eyebrows knotted like breeding snakes: "He is to be baptised and reared as a Christian. These were the Prætor's last commands!" His great voice leaped up from him like a hound unleashed. He roared, striking his staff upon the stone again. "But better he should die to-night and be gathered to his Pagan ancestors. Yea, better ten thousand times! Monk, do you hear?"
Paule bent his small wrinkled head upon its fleshless neck, and answered placidly:
"Jew of Alexandria, marvellous is thy probity! Wilt thou accept at our hands shelter and nourishment?"
Hazaël glared at Paule with bloodshot eyes, and angrily answered:
"Monk of Scete! I require from you neither compliments, nor anything else. There is a spring beneath some date-palms a bowshot from your monastery. There I and my companions will encamp, unless the trees are yours?"
Paule smiled and said, shaking his bald head:
"Like the crystal water, the fruitful trees belong to none save Him Who made them. Rest there, and to-morrow at the second hour come to me for news of the child!"
That night, whilst the Saracens sacrificed a black-and-white goat in honour of their Moon goddess and to propitiate the Afrits of Scete, Hazaël went apart into a solitary place in the wilderness and prayed to the God of his forefather Abraham. All night he prayed, kneeling with his forehead lifted to the sky, or lying prone with his face in the dust of humiliation. Then, remembering that when Joseph the Zaphenath-Päanea was borne in the second chariot in the royal procession of Pharaoh, the precious images of the false gods of Egypt figured in these displays; and that Joseph, in exercising vigilance over the goods of Pharaoh, was obliged to watch over and faithfully preserve these idols, he rose up and shook the sand of the Desert from his beard and robe.
At the second hour of the day he went to the Monastery. The millstones had been removed from before the door, as for an honoured guest. He beat upon the shield. Bolts groaned in their grooves of stone, and the small but heavy gate swung back upon its hinges, showing a courtyard within a square wall, set about with small cells built of rough stones and roofed with reeds. Date-palms and fig-trees, with a few olives were growing in a grassy enclosure about a stone-curbed well, over which was a wheel with a windlass, chain and bucket. Upon the threshold of the gate was Paule, tall, emaciated and with strangely luminous eyes, standing surrounded by a group of other monks in similar coarse brown habits. The Sacrifice was over, the board was beaten to summon the brethren to the refectory, as Hazaël, frowning, stooped almost double to pass under the squat archway of the gate. But as he rose to his great height the boy Florens came running to him with so noticeable a return of health and vigour, that the Jew could not repress an exclamation of surprise. As Florens caught at his arm, and raised towards the swarthy lips a face all fresh and smiling, framed in fair locks on which light drops of pure water hung glittering, Hazaël asked, looking keenly into the clear eyes:
"What have these monks done to thee?"
The child frowned with an effort of recollection, and said, pulling at a silken cord that now hung about his neck:
"Abbot Paule has given me a silver medal, and also a new name. I am now called Mark!"
At which Hazaël, seeing that the medal bore the Image of the Crucified, and a reverse of the great Apostle of Christian Alexandria; and comprehending that the drops on those golden hairs were the lustral waters of baptism, thrust the boy violently from him. He turned red and said reproachfully:
"Why are you always angry with me now?"
That night the caravan left Scete. Travelling southwards they came before dawn to the camel-route running between the Oasis of Ammon and the Nile, and thenceforward followed it to the east.
Leaving the camels and the Saracens to await them at Memphis, the two Jews with the boy entered the sailing-vessel of some Coptish sailors, who for a certain sum conveyed them up the river to Tabenna. This place, the boatmen told the boy, was once Taben-Isi, the City of Isis. The religious house ruled by Abba Pachomius was built of great stones which had once formed part of the ancient temples. Thirteen hundred monks of the tonsure were under Pachomius in the Monastery of Tabenna; and in the mountains of that region were many other monasteries and nunneries, also seven thousand hermits, following their several Rules in their own cells, there waging war against the world, the flesh and Satan; or living in tombs and caves after the method of the Athlete of Christ.
"Who is the Athlete of Christ?" the child asked the boatmen.
The Copts looked at the Jews, and observing that Hazaël listened, they were troubled, because they were Christians. But Hazaël said to them:
"Speak without fear. As the Most High lives, I will not betray you! This is a Christian child, my master's son, I carry to the monks."
Then the boatmen told of the deeds of Christ's great servant, the Egyptian, who had been born of wealthy parents near Aphroditopolis, and upon their death inheriting their lands and wealth, had given all to the poor, crossed the River, and became a Solitary; living first in an empty tomb in a burial-place hewn by the ancients out of the mountain, being supplied by a peasant man who visited him, with bread, salt and water, weaving ropes of palm-leaves and sleeping on the bare ground.
"Here," said the master of the boat, "the Adversary appeared to this holy man tempting him; and devils, sent by the lord of devils, assailed him with execrations and blows, whilst apparitions continually beset him, in the shape of lions, wolves, hyænas, serpents and other reptiles—which he banished by the power of the Word. Then, still a young man, he went out alone into the Desert and there lived in a ruined temple that was in the mountains above Panopolis for more than twenty years. In time his fame drew all the monks that were then in Egypt, and great folks and the curious, and those who were sick."
"And," said the other Copt, "when the Saint would not show himself to them, they lifted the gate out of its hinges, threw themselves down on their faces, and supplicated: 'Man of God, come forth!' And when he came, he seemed to those that had known him, as young as when he had entered. His look converted, his touch healed, his speech was exceedingly wonderful. And in the might of the grace that was given them, the monks reared a great Monastery near Panopolis that they might live there in holiness and be ruled by this Blessed One. But sixteen years ago he withdrew himself by the Desert of Arabia into the upper fastnesses of the mountain called Derhor, leaving another to be their Abba and spiritual guide. Since when, all here is quiet, though of old, even to men passing in their vessels on the river, the sound of great tumult and hideous outcries used to come down from the rocky eyrie where this eagle of God had made his nest. In the time of the first Persecution of the Christians by the Emperor, he descended from his mountain and went down to Alexandria to minister to the Confessors in prison there. He wished, they say, for martyrdom, but it was denied him. This very year, before the grapes and mulberries were ripe—when the Roman soldiers came to Tabenna, and the monks withstood them with boiling pitch and scalding water—they had sight of the Saint again!"
"His white hair and beard clothed him," the master of the vessel continued, "like a fleece newly bleached. He stayed but a few hours with the monks at Tabenna. Then he came down to the banks of the river, made the Sign of the Cross, lifted up his arms and sang a psalm, both powerfully and sweetly:
'Come and behold the works of God
Who turneth the sea into dry land!
In the river they shall pass on foot;
There shall we rejoice in Him.'
We have no knowledge that any one ferried him over, and whether angels conveyed him we are not able to say! But almost immediately he was seen continuing his journey to Alexandria upon the further bank!"
Hazaël broke out, forgetting his profession of tolerance: "Surely you saw this Athlete, who in three strides can traverse the distance between the Red Sea and the Thebaïd, separate the waters with his staff like the Lawgiver of Israel, and pass dryshod through their midst! Or perhaps he walked on the surface like the Nazarene Prophet, who was skilled in theurgy, and did many wonderful things?"
The Copts were silent and exchanged glances. But now the Monastery of Tabenna appeared in the distance, seated upon the skirts of the mountains, amidst groves of palms and olives, reaching to the river's brink. A great cemetery was near it, with many tombs both old and recent. A boat rowed by Egyptians, carrying a bier, with a corpse swathed and bound with garlands of bay-leaves and myrtle, and surrounded by mourners, now crossed the bows of the sailing-vessel and pulled for the Tabenna shore. Monks in black robes, with a cross-bearer and a boy-novice carrying a thurible waited at the landing-steps to take charge of the body, which was that of a Christian desirous of being interred in the cemetery's consecrated earth. As with the chanting of a hymn, the bier was lifted from the boat and raised on the shoulders of four of the brethren, the vessel containing the Jews and the son of Philoremus, touched the land. The monks moved on, carrying the bier, the mourners followed, and the strangers brought up the rear.
VIII
Seen in the distance the great Monastery of Tabenna was not unlike an Egyptian temple set between the mountain's rocky knees. So great was it that the sight of its fortress-like exterior inspired astonishment. Without the house were fields, gardens and orchards, and the Monastery, built four-square, contained a cruciform Church, a huge refectory where all the monks ate together; a school, a library, and a vast warren of cells where the monks dwelt, illuminated by little windows looking on the inner courtyard. Seats were their beds, for their Rule prevented them from taking their rest lying down: they wore sandals of hemp, coarse habits of black wool with leather cinctures, and skull-caps without nap, worked with a purple cross. The Abbot Pachomius was so bowed with the weight of years, that the upper part of his body was bent into a half-circle, and his face looked out from the middle of his breast. So many and so deep were the furrows upon that countenance—Time might have used it as a sailing-chart. Yet so kindly a smile beautified its ugliness, that the boy went to the Abbot without fear. The faithfulness of Hazaël in carrying out so strictly the commands of his dead master, while he would not even permit himself to enter the Monastery filled Pachomius of Tabenna, as it had Paule of Scete, with admiration of the man.
He said, having received the message of the martyred Prætor from the Jew,—whom he received in the inner courtyard, under a giant baobab that towered above the lofty walls of the building:
"It shall be said of you, O Hazaël, son of Hazaël, paraphrasing the saying of the Master: 'You entered not in yourself, but him who would enter you hindered not!' Verily to one who hath proved himself so faithful in this matter, much shall be given by Him one day."
"All that I require," replied Hazaël, "is a writing acknowledging the delivery of the boy to your safe keeping, and the receipt of these valuable jewels which I now place in your hands. They are to defray the cost of Florens' living and instruction, and the accounts of the rent of the vineyards of Kir Saba, the boy's inheritance, I will render when once in every third year I visit him in this place."
"If it be the will of God, friend," interposed the Abbot gently, "for death spares not even the just."
"Should the Holy One, blessed be He! sever my cord and cause the vessel of my life to be shivered on the well-stones," returned Hazaël imperturbably, "a kinsman will discharge the duty in my stead. Or my son Levi when he attains the years of discretion. Or the son of Levi, possibly."
"By the time thy Levi's son was ripe enough to undertake the business," said Pachomius smiling, as he seated himself on a stone bench beneath the shadow of the great baobab, and stroked the fair hair of the boy who stood beside him; "this little Roman might be a father also!"
"He is to follow his desire, whether he wishes to become a monk or a soldier," returned the Jew, who had declined the Abbot's previous invitation to be seated on the stone bench under the towering baobab. He delivered his master's message concerning the black onyx, and continued: "And now give me this writing of acknowledgment, for I must go upon my way."
The Abbot drew from a leathern wallet at his girdle some squares of papyrus, and said as he took a writing-reed and an inkhorn from a shabby palm-wood case:
"Of eating meat I say to thee nothing. But wouldst thou depart without breaking bread or tasting wine in the house of the Master?"
Hazaël answered, drawing down his black brows and scowling at the Abbot:
"A Christian is a Christian, and a Jew is a Jew!"
Pachomius returned the smouldering fire of the glance with a look of mildness.
"The First of all the Christians was the greatest of all the Jews."
The dark face sneered, and the whites of the black eyes glittered as the strong teeth flashed under Hazaël's tangled beard. Pachomius added:
"Yet in the days of your youth, were you not nourished by a Christian?"
"In those days my master worshipped Jupiter and the other gods of the Romans," said the deep voice out of the thicket of tangled black curls. "If the camel that bore the beam that killed my father, Rab Shemuel, had belonged to a Pagan idolater, I would, in revenge of the mockery wherewith that camel-driver mocked my father, have hated the Pagans, as I hate Christians to this day!"
"So that is the bitter reason of thy virulence!"
Pachomius, seated on the stone bench, had finished the receipt in rounded Coptic writing, and scattered upon it a pinch of sand. He was now waving the square of papyrus gently in the air to dry it. Hazaël went on, standing upright in the sun-blaze, with his shortened shadow squatting like a negro at his feet:
"The reason! And from the cup of my bitterness since manhood came to me, many Christians have drunk death! Now it is clear to you why I accept no seat under a Christian roof, O Pachomius!"
The Abbot's mild eyes looked out of the midst of the many wrinkles, without resentment, only seeing the indomitable honesty of this man. The quiet voice said:
"You were Chief Secretary to Philoremus the Prætor of Taxes. It was easy for you ... I understand! Had you acquaintance with Arius the Heretic?" ...
The deep answer came:
"Monk, I know Arius the Presbyter. And I have aided that treacherous and ambitious priest to encompass his ends,—for the serving of my own, that were righteous in the eyes of Israel!"
"Was it then your aim to destroy your benefactor?"
The question shot like an arrow to the mark. A dark flush rose beneath the swarthy skin, and the mouth under the forest of black tangled hair underwent a grim convulsion.
"The Lord on High knoweth that it was not! For though I was well aware my master went secretly forth in a habit like that of the Parabolani, yet to mingle with the people in various disguises had ever been his secret whim. It was not until I returned from a journey into Palestine that—" he choked—"that I learned the Accusers had testified against him—that I found him a prisoner under guard beneath his own roof—with the seal of the Military Governor upon his door!"
Pachomius regarded the speaker with compassion. He said:
"It may not then be known to you that Arius accused the Prætor in a letter sent to the Prefect of Alexandria purporting to plead on behalf of Christians outlawed by Maximianus. 'For,' said he, 'O Mettius Rufus! if Christianity be a crime, first banish it from your public tribunals. How long is it since your Prætor of Taxes has administered oaths to the public without burning incense, and invoking the Sabine deity? The Prætor's Chief Secretary, Aben Hazaël, the Jew, might be able to throw light upon this question. Indeed, it was from him I gathered these interesting facts!'"
A strange sound issued from the twisted mouth of the hearer.
"O poisonous serpent! Unclean, slavering hound! ... And my master knew of this?"
"Knew, but would not believe that you could be guilty of treachery. Did not Philoremus receive you as cordially as of old?"
The blazing eyes under the fierce black brows were suddenly veiled with water. Hazaël stammered as the heavy drops fell and glittered on his beard:
"He opened his arms to me as a father! ... He trusted me with his flesh and blood, and all the State had left to him.... He never gave me to suspect by a word or even a sign.... Give me that paper you have in your hand, for I am in haste to begone from here. I have yet another errand to carry out for him!"
He struck his staff deep into the sand, took the papyrus, cleared his bleared vision with a sweep of his hairy wrist, and read the monk's receipt. Then he stowed it in a wallet hidden within the bosom of his robe, grasped his staff and looked round as though seeking for something. The boy, who had strayed some distance away during the conversation, was standing before a row of pens containing the pets of the Monastery. Some guinea-fowls, with knobs of horn upon their beaks, and blue fleshy lappets upon the sides of their heads; a large brown-and-white eagle, chained to a perch, who observed his surroundings with half-veiled, ruby-coloured eyes, and a pair of graceful gazelles, brought from the Arabian Desert, enraptured Florens:
"Can they be mine? ... Shall one of them be mine?" he asked breathlessly. Then as the shadow of Hazaël darkened the enclosure, and the Jew's hand closed upon his arm: "You took away the other," the child said with a quivering lip, "and told Ephraim to kill it for supper. But you cannot take away either of these, because they belong to the monks!"
"Even as you do, from this time forth," said Hazaël, with an attempt at pleasantry. "So send a kiss by me to my wife, whom you wept so much to part with—and another to the playmate Levi—and another to little Leah—whom you love best of all!"
Then as the boy hung shyly back, estranged by recent harshness, he caught him roughly to his breast, kissed him, pricking his soft cheeks with the rough beard, and set him down again. The gazelles instantly absorbed him: Hazaël was completely forgotten: or else with the mimetic instinct of the child, Florens feigned forgetfulness.
Then the Jew looked round from his great height for the crooked little figure of the Abbot. Pachomius was standing under the wide-spreading branches of the baobab, with his crossed arms hidden by his wide, loose black sleeves, and his eyes closed as though in prayer. He opened them as suddenly as though he had been touched, and said, as though replying to a question of Hazaël's:
"He whom you design to seek out is in the inner fastness of Mount Attaka, below the dome called Derhor. Take a swift camel with bread, dates and water and a Saracen to guide thee and lead the beast. Follow the Desert to the North for the space of three days.... Climb the path over the Mountains and traverse the Great Valley of the Chariots of Pharaoh towards the rising of the sun. Cross the torrent-beds, and follow the pilgrim-way that leads north over the skirts of the mountains, the Gulf of Heroöpolis being upon thy right. Then pursue the pass that ascends to the west. This summit is the gate of the Outer Mountain, where thou wilt find a spring, with palms, a corn-patch and a garden-plot. This is the garden of the Athlete of Christ, who first broke the ground and tilled it, sowing lentils and vegetables. And though at first wild animals destroyed the crops when they came to drink water, he bade them cease from doing harm in the Name of the Lord! and the creatures obeyed the voice of His Saint. Take what you need of the growing things, they are there for the use of the Blessed One—and the comfort of those pilgrims who from near and far resort to him."
Hazaël saluted Pachomius and said:
"Of the water I shall drink, for the Most High caused it to spring in the midst of the wilderness. But of the vegetables I will not take, for the reason that you know. Farewell!"
"Stay!" said Pachomius with sudden, unexpected energy, "for I have more to say to thee, who art just and unjust, generous and revengeful, savage as a leopard, and faithful as a hound. Hear, thou that consumest the children of Christ in the flame of thy hatred for the man that killed thy father! If thou wouldst pierce the fastnesses of the Holy Mountain and attain speech with its Saint,—be not tempted to turn aside by the sight of gold or beauty! And forget not that to him who endures all things in patience, the Gate of Hope will open at last!"
"'The Gate of Hope!' Who spoke to thee—who has told thee?" Hazaël stammered, growing livid beneath his swarthy skin.
But the Abbot made no reply. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving, as in fervent but inaudible prayer. Some time had elapsed after the tall gaunt figure of the Jew had crossed the courtyard threshold, when the eyes of radiant light reopened in the brown mask of wrinkles, and the Abbot of Tabenna sighed, and rose upon his feet.
"O Keeper of the Secrets of Heaven, and Conqueror of Satan!" he said. "How clearly thy voice came to me but now, speaking at the inner ear. And Thou, O Lord my God! how marvellous are Thy dispensations! Thy Wisdom, how measureless, like the Eternity that sprang from It...."
He made the Sign of the Cross upon his brow, lips and breast, as the board was beaten that called the brethren to the church for recitation of the Second Office. Later he ascended the wall that made a fortress of the Monastery; and looked upon the wide Nile, flowing north-westwards between its borders of fertile land and the sterile sands of the desert, studded with perishing cities and the crumbling ruins of temples; mysterious labyrinths, petrified forests; banks of shells and seaweed, coral and bleached bones of monstrous creatures that bred in the primæval slime before the sea was separated from the land, and their Maker created Man.
The sun of early noon beat down relentlessly. Pulling his cowl over his bald skull and shading his eyes, the monk looked searchingly to the north. In the distance a mirage created a marvellous effect of blue lake, bordered by palaces embosomed in groves that were reflected in the shining depths. The broad stripe of yellow desert lying between the mirage and the habitations, monasteries, gardens and fields that lay about the ruins of the town and the Holy House of Tabenna showed some caravans approaching, but the monk paid no heed to them.
A moving speck, rapidly lessening in size upon the glaring yellow distance, he knew to be the camel ridden by Hazaël. A speck much smaller would be the camel-driver and guide. In three days, travelling at that rate of speed, they would reach the eastward-going track over the mountains, and descend into the valley of the Chariots of Pharaoh. Four days more would bring them to the Gate of the Outer Mountain and the spring of the Athlete of Christ.
"I obeyed," Pachomius thought, "the word of the Saint without question, the message coming to me from him who is the chosen messenger of God. Yet sinful as I am, I question now, and wonder. Why, O Holy One, didst thou but now command me to warn this relentless Jew—who like another Saul of Tarsus digs pits and traps for the destruction of Christians!—as though the stubborn enemy of Christ were to be tempted like a Christian Saint? Surely the Calumniator, knowing this man Hazaël for his own—will not trouble to ensnare him? Never have I encountered a soul more upright—or more remote from grace!"
A thrill Pachomius knew well, passed through his breast into his inner being. Not for the first time by many, a voice well-known, reduced by distance to a gossamer thread of infinite tenuity, spoke at the Abbot's inner ear.
"And if, even as that Saul who slew the Prophets, the Lord hath chosen such a man to be His servant, shall not the Judge of all the world do righteously? And if this man, blinded by pride and wrath, reject the offered grace—turn from the Light, and quit the threshold ere the Gate be opened—shall He Who planted in the human breast the soul—that is a spark of His Divinity—and dowered Man with Free Will that Man might choose Him!—shall He be blamed because His creature hurls back the gift into the Giver's Face?"
"I have erred!" said the Abbot, striking his breast—"O Lord, do Thou forgive thy silly servant!"
And all through the rest of that burning day, Pachomius knelt upon the wall of the Monastery of Tabenna, purging himself of sin by penance, and praying for Hazaël the Jew.
IX
At the spring of the oasis at the summit of the pass leading to the Outer Mountain, bronze-coloured doves, several oryx, and a herd of wild asses were drinking, greyish-red creatures these, white bellied, and marked by a broad black stripe down the back. The birds took wing, the beasts scattered over the plain at the approach of the camel and its two riders, who halted to water the animal and fill the goatskins, and take food and rest.
Bands of painted, naked Blemmyes, the fierce Ethiopian nomads of the south and eastern desert had shown themselves occasionally, but made no attempt to attack the travellers, whom they perhaps judged to be too poor to plunder, or too strong, fierce and well-armed to be despoiled without exacting tribute of life in return.
Before sunrise Hazaël and the Saracen camel-driver, who had agreed to guide him,—struck northwards through a rocky and difficult defile. This was the opening of the road that led to the inner fastnesses of Attaka, that stupendous mountain of pale red granite, streaked with limestone, and sometimes veined with porphyry, from whose summit, it was said, one could view the distant Mediterranean upon one hand; and upon the other look over to the Sinai ranges, across the Gulf of Heroöpolis, that widens into the Red Sea.
The region in which Hazaël now found himself was savage, bare and solitary. At the top of the defile the camel halted and knelt. The Jew dismounted and looked back. A crimson glow spread over the shining waters of the Gulf of Heroöpolis, and every object possessed two shadows; one cast by the sunrise and the other by the moon. The yellow plain of the desert, looking west, exhibited an illusory vista of cool blue waters, out of which rose little islands plumed with palm groves, reflected in the depths.
"Return," the Jew said to the guide, "and wait for me with the camel at the spring of the oasis. Yet first describe to me again, in number and device as I shall find them, the various signs by which pilgrims to the hermitage that is on Derhor, may find their way."
He listened as the guide spoke, storing these things in his strong memory. Here a column of porphyry set up; there a pile of oddly-shaped granite boulders; at the mouth of the defile an arrow scratched on a limestone rock with a lump of crystal; at the parting of ways a rude Cross fashioned of the pieces of a broken staff, and jammed between two great stones.
"Swear to me by your gods," said the Jew when the idolater had ended his recital, "that you have named these marks in the order in which they come!"
"By the Face of Truth!" swore the camel-driver, who was a wild and savage-looking object, with tangled hair smeared with rancid butter; grotesquely painted of face and body; hung about with charms and wearing a waist-cloth of gaudy colours under his mantle of camel-hair. "I have not lied! Follow these directions and you will return to find me waiting for you with the heggin. Yet pay me now the sum agreed, in case you lose your purse upon your way!"
Hazaël reluctantly paid down half, and set out upon his solitary journey.
The steep defile being ascended, the first sign was recognised in the shape of a rude pillar of porphyritic rock. This passed, the surface of the ground began to be more gently inclined. Heat radiated from the huge pinkish-granite boulders that almost scorched the flesh. The ground was covered with blocks of this stone, between which showed the arid yellow soil of the desert. A scrubby bush with black stems set with long white thorns, also tufts of seeding wild garlic and a spiny red-fleshed wild cucumber, bitter exceedingly, with wild fig-trees, grew between the granite rocks. Wild goats with great horns walked upon the verge of towering precipices and bounded from ledge to ledge. White eagles and huge ravens screamed or croaked from inaccessible eyries. The defile being passed, the rocks sank down. Barely a dry weed relieved the barren aridity. The yellow gravelly ground began to billow upwards, and into the troughs of these billows the sun poured down like molten brass.
Climbing over one of these extraordinary ridges, the Jew made an astonishing discovery. It was a dish or charger, circular as a Gaulish buckler, wrought with the victories of forgotten kings, and of the purest gold. The love of the Semite for this precious metal,—of which were carved the lions that adorned the throne of Solomon,—plates of which covered the Temple built by Herod,—and of which the Vine above its chief entrance was gloriously made,—caused Hazaël's sight to dim and his powerful frame to tremble. Such a mass of gold, all his by the right of discovery! ... He threw himself upon the treasure with such eagerness that his foot slipped upon a rolling pebble. He fell—and the gourd water-bottle he carried at his girdle was smashed into bits.
Moments passed before he grasped the full extent of his misfortune. With all his strength he could barely lift the massy charger, which might have contained a wild-deer or a calf roasted whole. Sweat streamed from him, and a raging thirst was aggravated by his efforts. He moistened his throat with a few drops of water left in a fragment of the bottle, covered the golden dish with sand, and marked the place with three stones. Then he rose up and strode onwards. Another defile presented itself before him,—not leading upwards but bending to the north.
To the south another opened, floored with huge granite slabs, frowned on by precipices. At its mouth on the left side was a conical mound of rounded black stones. Night rushed down before Hazaël had decided which of these forbidding roads it would be best to follow. That indicated by the mound looked the worst.... He was beginning to doubt the honesty of the camel-driver. If the hermitage beneath the summit of Derhor was to be reached, he must trust to his own good wits.
He chose the northern defile, and presently—with the rising moon—came into a wide valley walled in by sheer cliff-faces of limestone. At its eastern side rose a precipice of coal-black stone, down which appeared to flow a foaming waterfall. This appearance was caused by snow-white quartz, issuing like a solid torrent from a point high above, and flowing down into the rocky valley. There was no way out of this trap but the way by which Hazaël had come in. With his agony of thirst increased tenfold by the unreal show of water, he lifted his arms above his head and savagely cursed the deceptive flow. And as the echoes of his deep voice resounded from the precipitous walls of the valley, he turned about sharply—for a high whinnying laugh had answered from behind him—and the clatter of hoofs, light and small as an ass's or goat's, followed—galloping over the pavement of broken stone....
"Who laughed there?" the Jew cried, but no human voice answered, and the moon was veiled behind a light cloud that afforded no hope of rain. When the planet looked forth, no sign appeared of the supposed ass and his laughing rider; and Hazaël, suppressing the desire to bestow another curse upon the cheating torrent, made the two benedictions, and repeated the Shema for the first night-watch,—fortifying himself against the attacks of evil spirits within an iron wall of prayer. Then he painfully retraced his steps through the defile previously traversed,—munching the dates he carried in his wallet,—as the dried bread without saliva to moisten it could not be swallowed without pain. And as he went, he slept by snatches,—often wakened from one of these dozes by tripping amongst boulders, or jagged sharp-edged stones.
Walking still with indomitable determination, he had just repeated the prayer for the third night-watch, when he stepped into daylight across the edge of dawn. A dazzling play of colour was smitten by the sunrise from the wilderness of stone beneath and about him. Broad veins of purple and greenish-white porphyry, with red granite, and yellow and black limestone, with outcroppings of snowy quartz, streaked the towering sides of the defile: the stones and gravel beneath his great travelling boots of hippo-hide,—whose heels of elephant-nail kept him from slipping,—was composed of fragments of these. Looking about he came to the conclusion that in sleep, or during an interval of darkness, he had turned aside into another path. This led steeply up, and up,—the vari-coloured rocks closing in until a mere streak of fierce blue sky between the walls at the tops of the defile showed where egress might be obtained. To delay here was to die. Therefore Hazaël determined to go on.
Now, as he toiled upwards under the increasing torture of the sunrays, delusions born of thirst and weariness began to haunt his path. The faces of his wife Miriam, of Levi his first-born son and of his little daughter Leah,—rose up before him in the vivid hues of life. His dead master; the child Florens, or Mark as he must now be called; the monk Paule and the Abbot of Tabenna, moved with him among the scorching stones, on which the lizard rarely basked; and between which a few dry bushes lived without visible nourishment. Through a strange roaring in his ears he distinguished the voices of these phantoms. Sometimes he answered them without ceasing to walk.
He retained by this time barely the semblance of humanity. His eyes beneath the beetling brows were red as those of the captive eagle of Tabenna: and his long hair, and curling beard, uncombed; tangled with burrs; soaked with sweat, and clotted with the dust with which his ragged garments were covered, had the appearance of a wig carved in stone. Blood flowed from cuts upon his gaunt sun-blackened limbs—sustained when he had fallen. He realised that without water he could not now live long. Should there be dew that night, he might find sufficient relief by licking the stones, to endure forty-eight hours longer. Did no dew fall, he might possibly survive yet another day. What grieved him most was, that as the news of his death could not reach Alexandria for a long time after the return of Ephraim by way of the Libyan Desert with Mafa Oabu and the Saracens; his son Levi—who had already begun to study the Mishnah—would not say Kaddish for his father for many moons to come. And the thought of the anguish of his widowed Miriam would have moistened his parched eyelids, had in their dry and gritty channels one single tear remained....
Stumbling amidst boulders, striding from stone to stone, falling, dragging himself to his feet, and staggering on again, the recurrent image of Miriam tormented him more sorely. The fancy that at the top of the pass—where the rocks approached each other so nearly—her well-loved figure would appear with that square of blue sky behind it, became conviction. He bounded on, obsessed by the idea....
"Miriam! My loved one! ..."
He breathed like a beast roaring. His parched gullet and dried-up lungs would barely admit the air. He was bruised from head to foot and wounded in many places; but beyond that square of burning blue he would find—he knew it—home.... Home,—where he was welcomed as a King on each return from a journey,—the rooms festively adorned even as on the Sabbath! the table spread with fair linen, rich porcelain and costly plate,—the dishes such as he loved best; the thin sweet Mareotic wine cooled exquisitely in snow....
"Miriam.... My wife! I come!"
He heard a sweet voice singing.... He was nearing the square of burning blue framed in the porphyritic rock when a waft of perfume came to him, and a figure filled the frame.
X
A woman, but not Miriam. He stared at her blankly. He strove to speak, but his stiff tongue only clicked against his dry palate. His mouth gaped. He drank her in with long pants, veritably as though her beauty had been the luscious wine of Ephesus, chilled with Mount Hermon's snow.
She was draped in a robe of fine Egyptian byssus with crimson and purple borders, fastened about her rounded hips, and drawn over her beautiful bronze-tinted shoulders and bosom in many transparent folds. From beneath an Egyptian headdress of enamelled guinea-fowl's feathers her rich hair, plaited with gold wire strung with orient pearls and other jewels, fell down in broad bands on either side of her small face of purest oval, from which piercing glances were launched as arrows under eyebrows like ebony bows. Her wide silken trousers were red as the heart of a cut pomegranate; yet shot with green and purple in the folds. Her tiny sandals were of white leather, ornamented with golden studs.
"O Isis! Mother of the Dog Star!" ...
She veiled herself at the sight of the stranger. The rich amber and crimson tints of her cheeks and lips, glowing through the diaphanous covering, suggested ripe nectarines in a dish of frosted crystal. Her long eyes, under their jetty brows, were luminous and beryl-green. The voice that issued from her scarlet lips was as the cooing of doves in the sycamores; as the gurgling of waters from the heart of a mossy hill, as she continued: shading her face with an amber-handled fan of red flamingo-feathers, and rocking with her quickened breaths the heavy necklace of huge pearls suspending an emerald talisman between her swelling breasts....
"Pardon, my lord! but you appeared so suddenly! And O, the gods!—being a woman unprotected—and this so wild and terrible a place—"
Hazaël knew that his aspect must be terrifying. But the perfume of roses that exhaled from the fair woman mounted to his brain in waves of dizziness. Hush! Again the doves were cooing:
"I am the wife of an Egyptian noble. We live across the Bay, at Arsinoë, but pass the vintage-months in our summer palace at Aënus. And—my lord is stricken in years and yet desires posterity!—" There was a dancing gleam of mockery in the sleepy beryl eyes. "We have visited the shrine of the god at Pannias, but alas!—without remedy. So my lord commanded me, poor me!—to seek out the dwelling of this Christian hermit, offer him rich gifts, and ask him to pray for us to The Crucified.... Indeed, to be rich and without heirs is sad for the poor old man, is it not? Yet am I to blame for this?" She reared her little head upon the rounded throat, and the beryl eyes blazed angrily. "No, by Hathor! My lord Makrisi has been young and handsome; even, dear stranger—" the feathers of her fan softly touched the cheek of Hazaël,—"as thou thyself! ... Now is he a withered branch. And"—she shrugged—"would even the fields of Egypt bring forth their abundance, without the fertilising waters of the Nile? ..."
Insensibly he had approached, his long, heavy footsteps setting the loose stones of the steep pathway sliding downwards. His bloodshot eyes were at the level of her scarlet lips, between which rows of milk-white teeth were gleaming; his bearded mouth was dangerously near the wooing fragrance of her bosom. She sighed, and warm sweet fragrance assailed his expanding nostrils, and caressed his parched temples and cheeks. And the heat of the morning sun was like the downward draught of a white-hot smelting furnace. And the dazzling blue above and behind her seemed to burn in azure flame....
"O speak again! ... Do not cease!" he heard himself croaking, as though the cool, sweet, gurgling voice had power to quench the thirst with which he burned. She laughed beautifully; and said, pointing with her fan to a great reed pannier with a carrying-strap, set within the shadow of a deep cleft or cave in the face of the porphyry rock:
"See how this surly Saint has treated me, a Princess of the house of Schabak! Look upon this basket of purple figs, and black grapes bursting with honeyed ripeness! and green melons with scarlet flesh dripping with cloying golden juice.... By Phthah! the weight is as much as my black slave Zet can bear, and this man would not even open the door of the ruined temple under the shadow of the dome of Derhor, where he dwells with the Lili and the Lilith—the bat and the screech-owl—and the great white eagles, and the falcons of the rock—or answer me a word. So I wept, I was so angered, and Zet wept also,—for to carry the pannier down the mountain was abominable to him. And when we heard you coming he set it down and ran away. And for this he shall be beaten with rods until the blood runs, when we return home. Why do you look at me so strangely, O Satrap? for I see by your mien that you are governor of a province, in Assyria or Persia possibly? Am I less fair than the women of your country? Have I no beauty in your sight?"
Hazaël answered in his thirst-cracked voice, with reddened eyes devouring her:
"O Princess! Even in dreams I have never beheld a woman to compare with thee! But—but—I am wedded. A fountain springs in the courtyard of my house, and a fruitful vine shadows my threshold; and as apples of gold in a network of silver, precious unto me is the love of my wife!"
He reeled as he spoke and clouds passed before his eyes as though the steam of the blood boiling in his veins had rushed into his brain-pan. Blindly he sought to push them away. And a soft small hand closed on his huge wrist, and his arm became powerless and fell across her shoulder. He swayed like a giant palm-tree whose trunk is sawn through. And with astonishing strength the Princess supported him, saying in that voice like the gurgle of cool waters: