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  “But when was this marriage celebrated ?”

  “That I cannot tell you. Soon afterwards, one would suppose, to judge from the child’s condition.”

  “Shelom, upon my word I am in a very uneasy situation, and the worst of it is that I know as little as you do.”

  “You fear that the child who is to be born may not be Joseph’s ?”

  “I cannot permit myself to fear anything of the sort, and I forbid you to suggest it.”

  “I am under your orders, my lady.”

  “Shelom, you are a good creature. You must stand by us both.”

  “Yes, my lady. For my lady Hannah’s sake and for yours, and for the girl’s. But why should she have fainted? Were we discussing anything of concern to herself ?”

  “No, you were telling me about Prince Pheroras and his wife, and about King Antipater. Perhaps she was not listening but pursuing her own thoughts, and suddenly was overcome by anxiety for herself and her child. The last words that I had spoken were about a child playing with a horned viper. They frightened her, I suppose.”

  “It is likely enough, my lady. I wonder whether she is aware of her condition ?”

  “Perhaps not. But soon she will be, and then she must say something to me about it. Meanwhile, I propose to say nothing to her, and I beg that you will do the same.”

  That same evening Mary came to Shelom. “The lady Elizabeth assures me that you are a discreet woman.”

  “The lady Elizabeth is not given to bestowing idle praise, and I thank her for her good opinion.”

  “Shelom, there is something which I cannot ask your mistress to do for me. Perhaps you will help me. It is of the greatest importance. There is someone in Italy to whom I wish to send a message. You say that your husband has dealings with the merchants of Caesarea—could he arrange to have the message secretly delivered? I have a little gold with me : you shall have it all if you can arrange the matter quietly. And look, here is a Babylonian gold pin. You shall have this too, though it was a gift to me from my own dear mother.”

  Shelom replied in the calmest of voices : “Keep your pin, child. The message has already been sent.”

  Mary stared at her. “But I have not yet told you the message.”

  “You told it to me when you pricked your finger.”

  “I do not understand you.”

  “The message was sent off on the day that I left Jerusalem.”

  “This is absurd. To whom was it sent ?”

  “To the man whom you have in mind. A message of warning about his father’s intentions. I did not let the lady Elizabeth know that I had already foreseen the danger which threatens your friend.”

  “Have you a familiar spirit ?”

  “No, but I love you. And I have sent off another message since I came here, to the same man. My husband rode off with it a week ago ; he will give it to his agent at Jamnia.”

  “What message did you send ?”

  “I told him how it was with you.”

  “In what words ?”

  “In these words.” Shelom bent down and wrote in the dust these antique Hebrew letters :

  TETH-KAPH-DALETH-HE

  HE+YODH-ALEPH+YODH

  LAMEDH-BETH + TETH+ VAV

  “That is a novel way of writing,” said Mary. “Do the letters stand for numbers? It looks like a charm.”

  “A charm that will cheer him.”

  “Why do you not tell me more ?”

  “I have told you far more than you have told me.”

  Mary eyed Shelom steadily, and Shelom returned her gaze with the air of a servant who has done her duty well.

  “You are a strange woman,” Mary said at last.

  “You will come to understand me in time, Daughter of the Lotus !”

  At Jerusalem, Cleopas was saying to Joachim as they went up the steep road together towards the Temple : “But it is not true, surely ?”

  “Why should it not be true? Simon the High Priest had the right to bestow her in marriage on whatever man he pleased. And Joseph of Emmaus is of honourable family.”

  “Though not a Levite.”

  “Nevertheless he married the sister of your wife, and of mine.”

  “The club-footed one. When that marriage was arranged he was a prosperous merchant of middle age. Now he is old and bald and has already divided the greater part of his property between his four sons.”

  “He still has property at Emmaus.”

  Cleopas said impetuously : “Something is being concealed from you, honest Joachim. I believe that the High Priest betrothed her to Joseph because nobody else could be found to marry her.”

  Joachim stopped dead. “You mean ?”

  “Perhaps she acted foolishly,” said Cleopas, trying to speak in a light tone.

  “You mean my daughter ?” asked Joachim, narrowing his eyes and speaking softly. “Brother, put a bridle on your tongue, lest you offend me.” His fingers tightened on his almond-wood staff.

  Cleopas blustered. “I meant nothing, nothing whatever. Girls often behave thoughtlessly, especially in festival time : become compromised—innocently, very often. Why, my own sister…”

  “Yes, Cleopas, your sister perhaps, but not my daughter !” He turned his back on Cleopas and slowly went down the hill again ; he did not wish to enter the Temple with furious passions surging in his heart.

  Cleopas was irritated with himself for having blundered so stupidly. He had been trying to find out from Joachim the truth of the rumour that Joseph, having agreed to marry the girl, had come to the High Priest’s house with the redemption fee of ten shekels as bride-money, but that for some unexplained reason the contract had not been signed. If only he had refrained from that unfortunate remark! Now he had mortally offended Joachim, one of his dearest friends, and he would have to suffer the reproaches of his wife, whose sister Hannah was Joachim’s wife. He stood for a while where Joachim had left him, then turned and hurried down the hill.

  He soon overtook Joachim, plucked him by the sleeve and said : “Brother Joachim, forgive me my folly! It is written : ‘Even a fool when he holds his peace is accounted wise.’ But I, being worse than a fool, have forfeited that consolation.”

  Joachim answered : “And it is written in the same book : ‘A soft answer turns away wrath’, and again : ‘It is an honour in a man to cease from strife.’ Come, let us go up again to praise the Lord together in the Temple.” But as they neared the top he said quietly : “Cleopas, I did wrong to boast in your presence that I had rid myself of the burdensome responsibility of providing a husband for my daughter. Since you have proved yourself a wise man by the confession of your folly, I will confide to you my sorrow, which is too much for one heart to bear. The High Priest was directed in a dream to betroth my child to Joseph of Emmaus, in the house of whose married daughter Lysia she had spun the purple flax for the Holy Curtain. He sent to Joseph asking him whether he were willing to consider the marriage and whether, if so, he would ride up from Emmaus on a certain day with the bride-money. Joseph was willing enough ; but he came a day too late. Early on the previous morning as my poor child was walking with a companion from the College of Virgins to Lysia’s house they were both seized upon by bandits in a narrow lane and carried off. They set the other virgin free outside the City gates and she returned unharmed—none of her golden ornaments had been taken from her—but not my child. The High Priest would not raise a hue-and-cry in the City for fear of damaging her reputation ; he hoped that in good time the bandits would state the price of her ransom, which he would pay quietly. But not a word has been heard of her since. I am distracted with anxiety.”

  “Brother Joachim, I do not wish to add another faggot to the burden of your sorrow, but I suspect the hand of a Certain Man in this. If ransom had been the object of the abduction, why did the bandits release your daughter’s companion? Or why did they not at least rob her? It may be that at a time like this, when Messianic prophecies are flying from mouth to mouth, a Certain Man might not be
pleased with a marriage between an elder of the House of David and a daughter of the Royal Heirs. It may be that he has ordered one of his Levite creatures to debauch her. You know the Law. Since the contract was not signed at the time of the abduction she was still a virgin, and the man who enticed her need now only offer her guardian the bride-money in quittance ; he is then free to marry her at his leisure.”

  “If, as you suppose, the Man of Sodom has stolen my ewe lamb he will never escape my rage. I am an old man, but my hands are strong to strangle.”

  Cleopas frowned. Lifting his hand in warning he said : “Be silent, fool! Is it not written : ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay’ ?”

  Joachim’s lips writhed as he struggled with himself, but at last he had the mastery. “And it is written also : ‘He who hearkens to reproof gets understanding.’ I thank you, brother Cleopas !”

  They passed on and entered the Temple at peace with the Lord and with each other.

  Chapter Eight

  The Trial of King Antipater

  IT was some months before King Antipater, who headed Herod’s embassy at Rome, finally persuaded the President of the Senatorial Court to pronounce sentence of death against Sylleus the Arabian.

  This cost him twenty silver talents, for the President had been bribed by the other side to reserve judgement until the embassy had returned to Judaea—it was hoped that if none of them were present in Rome to remind the Emperor of the seriousness of the case he might be persuaded to grant a reprieve. All Antipater’s other business was finished, including that of submitting his father’s Will to the Emperor’s approval. The Emperor had expressed his satisfaction with it and entrusted it to the safe-keeping of the Vestal Virgins. But Antipater still could not sail home until he had secured an undertaking from the Commander of the Praetorian Guards that he would not postpone the date of Sylleus’s execution. This would probably cost another three or four talents.

  Ten days later, while he was still negotiating with the Commander, Antipater was angered rather than alarmed by an anonymous letter, dated four months previously, which reached him from Jerusalem. He found it folded in his napkin at breakfast. It contained circumstantial news of the nationalist plot, the subsequent death of his uncle Pheroras, the torture of the Court ladies, and the criminal charges brought against his mother, Queen Doris ; but he could not believe that any of these events had taken place, because there had been no mention or hint of them in dispatches of later date which had regularly reached him from his father.

  He showed the letter to two reliable members of his staff, expecting them to echo his disgust of anonymous libels. To his surprise, they did nothing of the sort. They confessed that the letter substantiated hints and rumours which had reached them from trustworthy sources in Jerusalem, but with which they had not cared to trouble him at the time. Antipater could read in their faces that the letter contained nothing that they had not already heard. They begged him to remain at Rome under the Emperor’s protection until he knew whether his father suspected him of complicity in the nationalists’ plot or the murder of Pheroras.

  Antipater reproved them for their credulity ; he said that a clear conscience was the best possible armour against lies and malice, as his father himself had recently proved when he came to Rome unsummoned to answer Sylleus’s baseless charges. He would therefore return to Jerusalem as soon as Sylleus had been safely dispatched. He wrote immediately to his father to say that he hoped to sail in ten days’ time and meanwhile gave him an itemized list of his expenses at Rome, regretting that the legal expenses in the Sylleus case had been so heavy. They amounted to nearly two hundred silver talents, sixty of which had gone in bribes to judges and court officials.

  He then condoled with Antipater on the death of his uncle Pheroras, the news of which had reached him officially from Antioch in a recent quarterly dispatch.

  “Oh, then it is true !” cried Antipater, and could not restrain his tears.

  “A word to the wise,” said Augustus kindly. “Unofficial reports have also reached me that Queen Doris, your mother, is in disgrace. advise you not to champion her cause blindly, as a son of your generous nature might be tempted to do. Your father is easily vexed ; assume her guilty until you have clear proof of her innocence.”

  Antipater asked : “Of what is my mother accused, Caesar ?”

  But Augustus would divulge no more. “The report was unofficial,” he said, with a smile of dismissal.

  Sylleus was executed on the Ides of September, and on the next day Antipater and his staff sailed for home in a fast galley, the Fortune. In the Ionian Sea they ran into foul weather, and again in the Cretan ; but the weather was calm when they sighted the coast of Cilicia and were hailed by a packet-vessel from Caesarea. Among the mail which they took aboard was a letter from Herod addressed to Antipater at Rome, begging him to return at once, whether the Sylleus case were concluded or not, since his long absence from public business was being felt more keenly each succeeding day. Herod, who wrote in most affectionate terms, referred only incidentally to the death of Pheroras, which led Antipater to conclude that a previous dispatch had gone astray ; and also touched on a “slight difficulty” with Queen Doris, who after showing “a somewhat stepmotherly severity” towards his younger wives had not accepted his rebukes in as good a spirit as he had a right to expect. “Doubtless all will be well, Royal Son, when you return as a visible pledge of the love between your mother and myself ; and for this reason, as well as for the others upon which I have already enlarged, pray make no delay, but spread your sails wide to catch the West Wind.”

  Antipater, a great weight lifted from his heart, showed this letter to the same two members of his staff. “Read for yourselves,” he said. “The mysterious letter of warning came from enemies trying to foment trouble between my loving father and myself. No wonder it was anonymous. How glad I am that I rejected your advice !”

  “May you continue so, Majesty! Pray forget what it was that we advised you to do.”

  Antipater had noticed a mysterious group of Hebrew letters, evidently numerals, written small on the back of the letter. He had puzzled over a similar group on a letter which had reached him from Jerusalem some weeks previously. He now unpacked the files and searched for the earlier letter, which, he remembered, was a report from the steward of his Jamnian estates. He found it without trouble and compared the figures. This was the earlier group, reading from right to left in Oriental style :

  1.

  19.

  17.

  18.

  18.

  8.

  12.

  3.

  27.

  The latter group was :

  5.

  24.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  5.

  6.

  15.

  32.

  The handwriting was identical, but what could the figures mean? Were these cipher messages? Then they could not be addressed to himself, since he had made no arrangement to correspond in cipher with anyone. Perhaps they were intended for some member of his staff? Or were they merely registration numbers used by the packet-service?

  He copied out both groups on a small scrap of parchment and studied them with the absorbed intentness that travellers often bestow on trifles during an uneventful voyage in calm weather ; but could make nothing of them. What puzzled him most was that they were written in the antique characters used in the earliest Scriptural texts, not in the modern Square script.

  The ship sailed up the Orontes to Antioch, where Antipater went ashore to pay his respects to Quinctilius Varus, the newly appointed Governor-General of Syria, with whom he had long been on friendly terms. Varus welcomed him with a quizzical look, and invited him to a private audience, but when, instead of making some tearful confession or passionate appeal for help, Antipater spoke cheerfully about current affairs and mutual acquaintances, he grew impatient and at last asked him pointblank whether the death of Ph
eroras had not greatly complicated his affairs.

  “No, Excellency : none of my business was in his hands. This is not to deny that the news was a sudden and bitter blow. I loved Pheroras well. He was more like a father than an uncle to me in the days when I was in exile, and I confess that I wept when I heard that he was dead ; indeed, I fasted in sackcloth and ashes for a whole day, as our custom is.”

  “Majesty, why do you hesitate to confide in me? I am your friend !”

  “What have I to confide ?”

  “Your well-founded apprehensions.”

  “I do not understand Your Excellency.”

  “Nor I Your Majesty. Well, I can be as silent as yourself if I please, but I have this at least to say. Your father has invited me to Jerusalem on legal business—which he does not specify but at the nature of which I can guess—and I propose to travel there in a few days’ time by way of Damascus, where I have been asked to adjudicate in a boundary dispute. I shall be most happy if you will ride in my coach with me. Reason tells me that you will be assured a more honourable welcome as my friend than either as your mother’s son or as your father’s colleague and heir-at-law. Have I made myself plain ?”

  “Your Excellency is most kind, but if my royal father has any suspicions of my loyalty, as you seem to hint, I should be unwise to increase them by placing myself under your protection, as if I knew myself guilty of some crime. Besides, he has begged me to make haste, and I cannot disobey him. I shall continue my journey by sea, and unless the wind changes I should be home in four days’ time.”

  “You have a noble soul, Majesty, but this is not an age in which nobility of soul is often rewarded. Remain with me, and I will take full responsibility for the delay, and help you to the utmost of my powers should your father bring any charges against you. For hand washes hand, and when you are sole sovereign, you will doubtless remember your debt to me. Refuse my offer, and you may find yourself without a friend in the world to support you in trouble.”