The two never spoke of Rubria’s inevitable death when together. It was true that her young body was becoming rounded with the sweetness of approaching puberty, though she was two years younger than Lucanus. It was also true that her pretty dark face was fuller, and alive with the joy of being young and cherished, and that her appetite had improved, and that she could, for brief intervals, play vigorously with Lucanus. But her mortal illness, Keptah knew, was only in abeyance. For Lucanus it was enough to be with Rubria, to touch her small warm hand, to exchange amused glances at Cusa’s expense, to run over the grass and to pick a huge and humid red flower to thrust over Rubria’s ear. They tossed balls to each other, laughing and shouting. They imitated the calls of birds, and gazed with awe and love at the small wild things in the forest. There were moments when they were so overwhelmed with inexpressible joy that they could only stand and look into each other’s eyes with beaming enjoyment and shyness. Day by day Rubria became more beautiful, more beloved of her playmate. Sometimes he thought, Surely God will not take away this treasure from me, this dear one, this sister, this heart of my heart. Without Rubria there would be no songs, no delight in the blood, no tenderness, no reason for being. He played with Rubria’s hair, as Diodorus had played with the hair of Iris, and he rejoiced in its silken lengths so permeated with freshness and the poignant scent of life. Sometimes, speechlessly, they embraced each other, and the sensation of Rubria’s cheek pressed to the cheek of Lucanus overcame him to a prayfulness of bliss. He would hold her in his arms and feel that he held the world, and all beauty and softness.
Seeing, Keptah no longer warned Lucanus of the inevitable desolation. He believed himself in the presence of something holy and alight with innocence. There were times when he mourned and questioned. Did God give only to take away? Did He rob for the purpose alone of taming the human heart to Him?
Cusa came upon Lucanus and Rubria one afternoon after they had been released from the schoolroom. Lucanus was weaving a garland of grass and flowers for Rubria, and she was watching with intent pleasure. A tame bird stood on her shoulder, all scarlet and jade, and it twittered in her ear, and occasionally she turned and kissed its yellow beak. The teacher, usually ready with a caustic phrase referring to a waste of time, was abruptly silent. He watched from a distance, and was overcome with melancholy. The gods jealously resented youth and beauty and joy among mortals. Here was a boy like Phoebus, god of the sun, and a maiden of shy virginity and mildness. Cusa, weighted with foreboding, turned away. A Skeptic, he nevertheless prayed that night that the gods would not be envious of this loveliness, this artless dulcitude. The next morning he said to Lucanus crossly, “If you are to be a scholar and a physician, I advise you not to cavort with young girls so carelessly. That is for the plebe and the vulgar. Attention! We take up Socrates’ dialogues again this morning. You are singularly obtuse about them, boy.”
This was an exquisite summer. All was serenity. Diodorus’ request for a transfer to Rome and his farm had not as yet been answered, but he had hope. He sedulously cultivated the hours with his wife, and some ease came to him. He avoided Aeneas as much as possible, and never again escorted Lucanus back to his home. Iris lingered in his mind as the memory of morning, but he sternly kept himself from encounters with her. She was a dream, to be remembered as a dream. If a man could not strictly control his thoughts, then he was not a man, and particularly he was not a Roman. Life demanded discipline of both the mind and the body, and especially of the heart. He received books from Rome, and immersed himself in them. They had a special meaning for him now, these philosophies of ascetic men full of wisdom who sounded the note of patience and fortitude as men strike solemn and sonorous bells. Drowned in eternal philosophy, he forgot the corruption of Rome and the fetid and clamorous present. Let the whole world fall. Truth was immortal. “ ‘The stupid people run to Rome,’ ” he would quote to himself, “ ‘but man finds refuge in verities’.”
Rubria achieved puberty, and Aurelia rejoiced. There were momentous sacrifices in Aurelia’s favorite temple, the temple of Juno. She commended her daughter to the wife of Jupiter, the guardian of hearth and family and children. She would look into Rubria’s luminous eyes, so pure and innocent, and would dream of grandchildren. There were still Roman families who had staunch young sons, devoted to the gods and to their country. One could have grandsons, if one did not have sons. She bound up Rubria’s hair in ribbons and counseled her in modesty. She taught her the arts of the household and the kitchen, and how a woman can best please her husband. She wrote to friends in Rome, and commented on the growing beauty and maturity of Rubria.
“You are hurrying matters,” said Diodorus one evening, “The girl is only eleven years old.” He was jealous of any youth who would take his daughter from him and enjoy her laughter and sweetness, and cleave her to him, and make her forget her father.
Aurelia, musing over a wax-coated tablet on which she was writing to a beloved friend, the mother of stalwart sons, said abstractedly, “What will be our daughter’s dowry? Diodorus, forget your banks, I pray. We must consider Rubria’s future. She will be ready for marriage in less than three years.”
Three years. I am an old man, thought Diodorus resentfully. He said, “You are hurrying matters. The chit romps in the grass, and she is still a child.” That night he cradled Rubria in his arms and sang her to sleep, and then sat watching the shadows her eyelashes cast on her pink cheek and the sweet curve of her mouth. My darling, he thought, my heart’s own darling. Surely never was there a maiden so lovely and so innocent, so warm of flesh and so dear. A Hebe born to serve the very gods themselves. He turned away from the thought with a sudden surge of terror. Let the gods get themselves other servitors! They were gods, and had multitudes, but he had only his daughter.
One afternoon Keptah came into the schoolroom and said briefly to Lucanus, “Come.”
Cusa frowned at him and said, “The boy is studying Plato at this moment.”
“Come,” said Keptah to Lucanus, ignoring the tutor, who, after all, was only a slave. And Lucanus, without a word, rose and left the room with the physician. But, on the threshold, he paused to bow to Cusa, understanding that slaves and servants are very sensitive.
Diodorus had put an ass in the service of his freedman, Keptah. “A scurvy animal,” said the physician, with some vexation. “But I have heard that asses are frequently wiser than men and have a sense of humor.” He borrowed an ass for Lucanus. “Today we go to Antioch,” he said. “Ah, here is your animal from the stables. It is fortunate that we do not demand horses, for we should be disappointed. For a Roman our master is not impressed by equine flesh, and all his creatures are flea-bitten. What is money for but to enjoy? But there are some men who enjoy the thought of their coffers more than the thought of profiting by them.”
His ill nature made Lucanus smile. The asses were plump and well curried, and eyed the physician and the boy arrogantly. “They are not impressed by us, either,” said Keptah, mounting. His long and bony legs dangled almost to the ground, and Lucanus laughed. He sprang on the ass assigned to him, and caressed the animal’s neck, and the ass closed his eyes in boredom. Now they began to trot on the road to Antioch, and Keptah was unusually silent. He had drawn his hood over his head less in an effort to protect himself from the raging sun than to retire into solitude. Sometimes Lucanus whipped his ass to a gallop, rejoicing in the sun and the wind, which did not sear his fair skin. His golden hair blew behind him, and he sang. He did not know where Keptah was taking him but it was enough to be free and in the light, and to be young, and to see the masses of blue, crimson and scarlet wild flowers along the narrow road. He had his dreams.
Antioch, as always, was a boisterous welter of color and heat and stenches. New fleets from the Orient and other strange lands stood at anchor in the blazing blue harbor, their white and red sails throbbing against the sky. The narrow, rising, and curving streets rang to alien voices, and every doorway, every cobbled passage and alley, showed
voracious dark faces, and echoed to profane, shouting and laughing exclamations. The shops teemed. The cries of the merchants were deafening. Camels complained, chariots roared by, asses whinnied, and there was a smell of hot broiled meat and wine and sourness and spices in heated pockets along the streets. Jews, Syrians, Sicilians, Greeks, Egyptians, Thessalonians, Negroes, Gauls and assorted barbarians in strange costumes walked or bustled along each street, raising clouds of sharp white dust in the sunlight. There were contentious arguments and brawls here and there, and pale bright buildings jutted in the air. Children played in the very passage of vehicles and animals, and cursed the riders, or begged for alms, their impertinent faces brown with the sun.
Lucanus loved the glaring city, and was excited by it. He saw men and women entering small and pillared temples, doves and young kids in their arms. He saw the bright banners, and smelled the warmth of hay and the pungency of dust. He hoped that Keptah would take him to the physician’s favorite wineshop, but Keptah passed it without a glance. Roman soldiers flirted with girls in bright garments; they were particularly attracted to maidens with veils. They chaffed the young females, and dark eyes flashed in the sunlight. The din was a palpable presence in the hot and spicy air, which had an overtone of dung and garlic in it. Diodorus spoke of Rome, that Imperial City, but Lucanus thought that no city could have such odors and enticement. Women stood on balconies, and from within some of the houses came the twanging of lyres, and laughter, and then the scent of orange blossoms and roses from gardens behind high walls.
Keptah trotted along on his ass, withdrawn and secret, and, to Lucanus, a depressing presence in all this color. A group of sailors in loincloths, and with great golden rings in their ears, were quarreling on a corner, their blackened faces fierce and violent, their gestures vehement. Their strange voices, speaking in a tongue Lucanus did not recognize, clamored in the heat, and a knife glittered. Keptah moved along as if he were alone. Lucanus sighed. There was more to life than philosophy. Hot bodies pressed around his donkey, and there was an acridness of sweat everywhere. Dry palms, sifting with dust, scattered themselves along the streets. Peddlers, carrying trays of sweetmeats, blown with flies, shrilled their wares and ran after the boy and man on bare brown feet, and then, discomfited, cried curses upon them. Beggars sat against walls, wailing, rattling their cups, their beards tangled and filthy. Women offered flowers in baskets, and old men with staffs walked unseeingly through the welter as if they were no longer of this world. A group of goats being driven by a boy blocked passage momentarily, and the animals whimpered and skittered and danced. As always, Lucanus was enchanted. He laughed at an insolent monkey on a man’s shoulders, and wanted to inspect a shop of parrots.
The streets became quieter and dimmer, and Lucanus was conscious of few walkers and fewer vehicles. Now the buildings, old and decrepit, had an air of gloom. The noises of the city faded. The howls of dogs diminished. Lucanus, subdued, trotted beside Keptah, and asked, “Where are we going? I have never been here before.”
“Quiet,” said Keptah, in a faint, hoarse voice from within his hood. “I have waited for a long time for a reply to a message, and it came only today.”
The air was chillier here, the cobbled stones wet and glistening as though it had rained, the walls of the houses shut and somber. The hoofs of the asses raised echoes and astringent dust. A rill of gutter water ran over the stones, dark and slimy, and it made a throaty sound, and stank. Walls of dark stone rose on each side of the closed street, and no voices rang from them. But once or twice Lucanus heard the soft howling of unseen cats, and he thought of Isis, the hoary goddess of the Egyptians, and hidden rites, and the mysteries of the East. The boy shivered; the dewy sweat turned cold on his flesh and he wished he had brought a cloak.
Then, abruptly, Keptah reined in his gray ass and made a gesture to the boy. They had halted before a tall wall of basalt, black and blank. No window pierced its strong and forbidding emptiness. No sound of life sounded from behind its height. Only a small door stood in its repellent facade. Keptah dismounted, and dismally Lucanus followed. Keptah, not speaking, knocked on the door as if signaling. The rapping echoed from walled side to side. Keptah waited; then he knocked again. This time there was a rattling of chains, and the withdrawing of bolts. The door opened with a complaint of hinges. The aperture widened and an old man in a rough gray tunic stood there, an incredibly small one with a long white beard and the brightest brown eyes Lucanus had ever seen — the eyes of a smiling and wondering child. Keys clanked at the hempen girdle, and his feet were bare.
He spoke to Keptah in an incomprehensible tongue, quick and welcoming, and he bowed deeply. And all the time his eyes darted over Lucanus with curiosity. He opened the door wide, bowed again, and stepped aside.
Lucanus blinked, dazzled. Beyond the door lay a vast garden of silken grass, date palms, shining trees, fountains, and beds of roses and lilies, and all manner of other flowers. The garden basked in sunlight as if of another world. Clumps of willows blew like green cataracts in the softest and sweetest wind. The fountains sang and the trees answered. At some distance, in this brightness and perfume, stood a square building, low and radiant, made of white marble, and beyond it stood still another building of gray granite, with arched windows shuttered against the light, and as silent as a sepulcher.
Paths of yellow stone wound through the gardens, and marble benches were scattered here and there in clear dark shade, protected from the sun. Never had Lucanus seen such beauty and tranquillity, and yet there was an air of dignity and withdrawal in the gardens and about the buildings, and the silence was unbroken by a single voice, nor was there anyone visible in the grounds or about the marble edifice or the other building. The boy was astonished. He stood in bemusement as the door closed after him and Keptah, and he was not aware of the careful thrust of bolts and the clang of chains.
“Come,” said Keptah, and Lucanus followed him over the soft grass. Birds of all colors peered down at him from gilded branches. The fountains murmured. The roses moved and exhaled warm fragrance. The lilies lifted their white chalices and breathed out their holy perfume, and bees hovered over them and thrust their golden bodies deeply into the cups. And then for the first time Lucanus was conscious of a sound he had missed before; it was a sound hardly perceptible by the ear, not song, not chanting, but a faint combination of both. It was part of the brilliant air, part of the fountains, part of the wind, and yet a human voice.
Keptah led Lucanus, in silence, across the grass and towards the square low building of marble, which had no windows and no porticoes. A bronze door carved with strange figures glimmered in all that whiteness, and this opened. “Enter,” said Keptah. Lucanus, even in his bemusement, was startled. No hand had opened the door; it had moved seemingly of itself, and with no creak of hinges. Lucanus stood on the threshold and hesitated before entering. Keptah murmured, “Speak nothing; ask no questions. I will leave you for a while.” The door closed before his face and Lucanus was alone.
Though there were no windows, and no open door, the bare whiteness of the large room was suffused with a swimming and pearly light, which deepened, brightened, faded, then brightened again. It was impossible to see the source of the light, pulsing like a peaceful heart. It was one with a spiciness like incense, which came from everywhere and nowhere. Lucanus sensed at once that he was in a temple, but what kind of a temple he did not know, and for some inexplicable reason he began to tremble.
Then in the center of the room was the strangest thing of all, not an altar, but something that struck a quick fear to the soul of the boy. On a wide central platform of three low white steps of marble stood the great symbol of the most infamous thing in the world, the symbol of the vilest criminality and death. It was a huge Cross, seemingly made of transparent alabaster, and it towered almost to the flat ceiling of smooth stone. Lucanus’ fear changed to awe and amazement. The Cross soared alone, and there was nothing in the temple but its simple and dreadful majesty, and no s
ound but absolute silence.
The light pulsed and waned, and the Cross waited. But Lucanus stood for a long time looking at it, his heart beating loudly in his ears. A few times, a very few times, he had seen a crucified man on one of the hills near Antioch, and he had been moved to tears and a nameless anger. And then he had seen the golden cross in Keptah’s hand on the night of the Star, over two years ago. He had almost forgotten.
Timidly, walking slowly so as not to disturb this sanctified silence, and not to quicken the ebbing and flowing radiance, he approached the Cross, and stood at the foot of the glistening shallow stairs looking up at it. Its mighty arms stretched far above him. It had a waiting and unearthly quality, cool and expectant. Its body was fixed and powerful, yet airy as light. It appeared less than stone now, to the boy, but something sentient and eternal, immovable in its vastness, carved in grandeur.
Lucanus stood and looked at it, and could not turn aside. There was nothing in him now but an unnamable anticipation. His throat throbbed. Without his volition his knees bent and he knelt on the first step and clasped his hands, never looking away from the Cross. It loomed over him, and he felt some awful prescience in it, and yet it was as if the arms hovered over him protectingly. Now the light in the temple quickened, like the reflection of the moon on wide wings.
There were no thoughts in Lucanus, no awareness of flesh, only a deep wonderment and something like joy touched with grief. He knelt for a long time, his blue gaze lifted high to the Cross, his hands clasped.