He stopped and closed his eyes, and the torture of that memory leaped out over his face in large beads of sweat. He made a feeble gesture and opened his eyes again. “The prefect of the city took charge. Had I enemies? Who knows what enemies a man has among his loving friends? I have tried to be a just man, honorable in all my dealings, and I have become very rich. Did that inspire friends with envy and rage? It is possible. A man can guard against his enemies, but never his friends, for they are within his walls. The prefect, against my protests, arrested some of my good poor people and even tortured them. How, he asked, was it possible for two murders to have been committed within guarded walls and gardens, and a child abducted without the knowledge of other servants? But the overseer of the hall had seen no stranger. The guardians of the gates had admitted no one. Had bribery taken place? That was very possible. My people were freed at my insistence. They swore to me that they were not implicated.”
Lucanus was filled with rage, forgetting that Elazar was a rich man, and feeling his anguish in himself.
“That was two months ago,” said Elazar. “My son, Arieh, is only two years old. What have they done to my child? Is he dead, lying in some lonely place in the desert, or has he been drowned? I do not feel it in my heart. I know he is alive, and that his abduction was a deliberate malice inspired by hatred. Who is the friend who bribed a servant to kill, and steal a little one? Does he sometimes stand beside my bed, murmuring his commiserations, and drinking my wine, and consoling my daughter, Sara, and swearing vengeance on my enemies? It is very possible. My eyes have grown blind with searching every face. Who is the friend? He is cloaked in evil and therefore invisible.”
Elazar lifted his left hand and showed it to Lucanus. The little finger was oddly malformed, bent sharply at the second joint so that the finger overlapped the next to it. “That finger is the mark of the males of my family,” he said. “My son, Arieh, has it. It will identify him.”
He ceased to speak, but his mournful eyes never left Lucanus’ face.
“You will find my son,” he said, and he smiled feebly. “My heart tells me this. Perhaps it will not be tomorrow, or a year, or ten or twenty years. But you will find him. I have posted a huge reward in all the capitals of the world, but still there is no answer though a thousand thousand informers and thieves and soldiers and sailors and slaves and seamen are searching in their eager greed. The hands of little boys, multitudes of little boys everywhere, are being furtively examined, in hundreds of villages and towns and cities, in alleys, in streets, in slums, in the homes of the powerful and the poor. I have freedmen all over the world investigating rumors and running down every report. But there is still no sign of my son.”
“He is, then, most probably dead,” said Lucanus, sadly.
“No,” said Elazar. He put his hand to his chest. “My heart tells me he is alive, perhaps hidden, but certainly alive. I should know it if he were dead. And so you will find him, and you will bring him to Jerusalem to inherit what I will leave him, my son with his crooked finger, my son who resembles a young lion.”
Lucanus was silent, both with compassion and anger against God. He understood now that Elazar was dying of his agony and grief.
“You will find my son,” said Elazar, and a smile of trembling joy broke out on his face. “You will return him to his people and his sister and to the gates of Jerusalem.”
Lucanus thought this preposterous. He opened his mouth to protest, then was silent, and he did not know why. Finally he said, as Elazar watched him, “I am a physician, and I will be among the poor always, who have no friends and no comforters and cannot pay a fee. And I will search for your son. It is all I can promise.”
“It is enough,” said Elazar, and he held out his tremulous hand to Lucanus, who took it, feeling its cold wetness. Elazar’s face, at the touch of Lucanus’ fingers, underwent an extraordinary change. A look of marvelous peace settled on it, a surcease of pain. His eyes closed, and his erratic breathing slowed, as Lucanus held his hand, and became even slower, moment by moment. And then it was gone and only the faintly smiling face, stark and ghastly, remained.
Sara rose to her feet with a heartbroken sob and stood beside the bed. Tears ran down her pale cheeks. She clasped her hands and shivered.
Joseph ben Gamliel said in a loud and reverent voice, “The Lord gives and the Lord God takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!”
“Blessed be the Name of the Lord,” Sara repeated through her tears.
Lucanus put down the dead hand with gentle love, but in his heart there was a rage of pain that sickened him. He glanced at Joseph ben Gamliel with fiercely sparkling eyes. How was it possible for a wise and learned man to praise the Name of the deadly Enemy of all men? He thought the words of Joseph craven and weak, the words of a servile slave under the lash. He was disgusted; his head whirled with his furious pain and loathing. He turned on his heel and left the room, walked quickly through the colonnade and left the house.
Chapter Nineteen
It was dangerous to be alone on the streets of Alexandria at night, and Lucanus eased the blade of his dagger at his belt. He was not afraid; he was an athlete, and he was tall and strong, and he was not far from home. He kept his hand on the hilt of his dagger, and he walked rapidly, filled with his seething anger and pity, the hood of his white mantle pulled over his head, his garments swinging about him. He walked down the center of winding streets, avoiding offal, seeing no one passing him, his nostrils filled with the stench, the spice and the aromatic odors of the city, his heart and mind consumed with his thoughts. Torches thrust into iron sockets on walls splattered his figure with leaping and dying red light. The great burning white moon ran over him in sheets of silver fire, and so formidable and powerful was his aspect that furtive faces peering out at him from arches and doorways winced back as if at the sight of a striding apparition.
Lucanus was not aware of distant cries and shouts, or of music or laughter, or of all the tumultuous breathings and sounds of the torrid city. He was aware only of his turbulent thoughts, his grief for Elazar and the beautiful young Sara, and his wrath against God, who endlessly betrayed and haunted in His sleepless vindictiveness against man. He thought of the child, Arieh, who he was convinced was dead, murdered in malice and hatred, and now, for the first time, Lucanus revolted against the evil in men, against their cruelty and mercilessness, against their greed and envy, against their bloodthirstiness and boundless hardness of heart and their crimes against their fellows. Here was another enemy beside God: man himself. In those frightful moments Lucanus hated both God and man, and he was sickened with his own living, his own presence in the world of humanity. The universe was evil to its very core; the very stars were tainted with the stain of life. Everything enlarged, tilted, and became distorted to the young Greek’s hot eyes. He was drunk with his wrath. When a passing man jostled him his hand tightened on his dagger and for the first time in his existence he uttered a violent oath, and the man ran from him in terror, catching sight of an unsheathed dagger and feeling, rather than seeing, a rage that was larger than human, aware of a blaze of eyes, even in the shelter of the hood, that surpassed the rage of men.
Lucanus’ sandaled feet rang on stone like the march of a god. Without thinking consciously, except that he was looking for a shorter way through an alley towards his house, he turned down a narrow, dark street, lighted only by the glimmer of a single torch at the entrance and the glitter of moonlight. Tall dark walls enclosed the street, and suddenly it was very quiet here, with a sinister quiet. The only close sound was the rippling of filthy water in the gutter, and the stench was overpowering. Lucanus continued down the street, then halted. He had come face to face with a high wall. The street had no exit. He looked about him, at the forbidding walls that had trapped him. He was alone here; he could see nothing but the dark bulks of lightless top stories of houses beyond the walls. No one spoke or cried; it was a dead place.
Fuming, he saw that he was momentarily lost. H
e would have to retrace his steps to the end of the street and look about him. Again he uttered that low and violent oath. Perhaps there was a door in the wall facing him which would permit him entry into a courtyard, and thence to another and less dangerous street. With the aid of the moonlight, and his sensitive fingers, he explored the wall, and encountered only rough and grimy stone. He continued to explore, and then at the juncture of the end wall and the wall of the street his hand fell on a latch. He lifted it, and a door opened, small and narrow, and he looked into a cobbled courtyard surrounded by the looming tenements which housed the very poor of the city. But the windows were all lightless and closed, the doors barred. In the center of the courtyard there was a round common well built of dusky stone. No flowers bloomed here; there was no perfume of rose or jasmine or lily, but only a sour foul odor of poverty and fear and death. By the moonlight Lucanus could see that the squalid houses circled the courtyard, and there was no egress to another alley or street. He closed the door and dropped the latch and began to walk back up to the end of the imprisoned alley. He became aware of the stinking water, the silence, the threatening walls, and kept his hand tightly on the dagger. The distant torch flickered crimson, and feebly, at the end.
He was near the corner when he heard the rapid pounding of as yet unseen feet approaching him. He stopped abruptly. The sound of flight aroused all his wary instincts. He considered that the fleeing people might be thieves running from pursuit. Then a man and woman turned the corner and raced towards him, their feet impelled by a palpable terror, their heads looking back over their shoulders. Lucanus could hear their gasping breaths in the intense silence, and the stumbling of the woman on the stones.
They were almost on Lucanus before they saw him, and they halted in mid-flight and stared at him, their eyeballs glistening like the eyes of terrified animals in the moonlight. If he had sprung up from the ground to confront them they could not have been more affrighted. The hood of his mantle had fallen on his shoulders, and the moon struck golden fire from his head, and the hard flat planes of his face were like the planes on the face of a statue. The man and the woman fell back, for there was something in the tall aspect of Lucanus that stifled the very breath in their throats, and they strained their gaze upon him.
He saw that they were young, and he immediately knew that here were no criminals, though the man was dressed in fluttering rags and his feet were bare and he wore no mantle and no arms. The woman’s dress was good, modest, and respectable, and of a dim purple color, and her girdle was of silver, and there were silver rings, sparkling with simple jewels, in her ears, and her arms tinkled with silver bangles, and her feet were shod.
“What is it?” asked Lucanus quickly, in Greek. They did not answer, so he repeated the question in Egyptian. The woman burst into wild sobs, then she flung herself on her knees before Lucanus and clutched his garment. “Help us, Master!” she cried, and began to wail feebly. The young man stood apart and could not take his eyes from Lucanus. But he shrank back and tried to cover his body with his rags.
Then Lucanus heard the running steps of many pursuers approaching the street and saw the red shadow of carried torches. The young woman moaned and instinctively pressed her forehead against Lucanus, and she again pleaded with him for help. But the young man said in a curiously hoarse voice, “Asah, go with this man, and he will help you escape, and leave me. Asah, return to our children!”
The girl only moaned again. “No, I will remain with you forever,” she sobbed. “I will die with you.”
The approaching sound of the pursuers aroused Lucanus. He pulled the girl to her feet and said to the man, “Come with me. Quickly!” He caught the girl’s hand and ran with her towards the rear wall, and the man followed. He found the door, opened it, and thrust the two within, and said quietly, “Remain there. I will divert them.”
Trembling, they stood for a moment and looked at him, and again they were strangely struck at what they saw. Then the door closed, and they were alone. “He is like Osiris!” the girl whispered, and struck her hands together, and fell on the edge of the well. The man did not approach her but shrank up against the side of a circling house and shut his eyes. “You saw his face!” the girl went on, and bowed her head. “Hush, beloved,” said the man, and kept himself far from her.
Lucanus went rapidly up the street, then as a crowd of men and soldiers appeared at the entrance and hesitated, lifting torches high and cursing, he slowed his step and approached them calmly. They started down the alley. They saw him approach and stopped. He walked with dignity and assurance, as a nobleman walked, his dagger in his hand. He looked at the sweating and armored soldiers, and spoke in the authoritative language of Rome.
“For whom are you searching?” he demanded, speaking only to the centurion. “I am Lucanus, son of Diodorus Cyrinus of Rome, and a physician.”
The torchlight fell on the dark faces of the mob surrounding the soldiers, and Lucanus could see the wild eyes and the slavering mouths and the upraised clubs dancing in that red glare. A sharp silence fell on the pursuers, then the centurion stepped forward, raised his hand respectfully and spoke, his eyes wondering.
“Master, we are searching for a man and a woman, a man and his wife. They ran before us. Have you seen them?”
Lucanus paused. Lies were foreign to him. He said, “You see that I am alone, and there is no one with me. Moreover, this is a street without exit. Observe that rear wall. I am returning to my home, and I am lost. I will be most thankful for the escort of one of the soldiers, for this is a dangerous city.”
His one thought was to turn the soldiers and the mob away from this street so that the man and the woman could later escape. The centurion saluted him. “Master, one of my men will accompany you. In the meantime we must search for those people until we find them.”
“Are they thieves?” asked Lucanus. He drew in his nostrils against the pervading odor of sweat and violence that enclosed the pursuers.
“No, Master. The man is a leper.”
“A leper!” Lucanus stood and looked at them.
“Yes, Master, one Sira. He was driven from the city into the desert a few months ago. You know it is mandatory death for a leper to return once he has been exiled to live in the caves. Yet tonight some of his neighbors caught him peering through a window of his house some streets from here, staring in at his wife and children. The woman, Asah, lives with her parents, and her father is a shopkeeper of some substance. The neighbors aroused the watch. As a physician, Master, you understand that a returned leper is not only a menace, but must die, for he has broken the law and could infect others.”
“Yes, I understand.” Lucanus stood in wild thought. He shuddered. Yet all at once his heart was again filled with warm compassion and sadness, and he considered the plight of Sira, who wanted only to glimpse his wife and children again before eternal exile and death.
He said, “How could the woman know of the presence of her husband at the window?”
The centurion replied patiently, “She heard the cries of the neighbors and their shouts for the watch, and she ran from her house, and, seeing her husband beginning to flee, she ran with him, knowing that he must die at once.” The centurion shook his head. “There is no intelligence in women, Master.”
No, only love, thought Lucanus.
He sheathed his dagger. He did not know what to do, but do something he must. He reflected that Sira had only wished to see his family. It was evident that he had had no intention of remaining in the city, or even permitting his wife to know of his presence. That meant that if the neighbors had not seen him he would have departed as silently and as voicelessly as he had returned, back to his living death and suffering in the desert. He must be given that opportunity, though death was better than life as a leper. Moreover, there was his wife to consider. She must be spared witnessing that vile mob falling upon her husband and destroying him before her eyes. Lucanus could smell the blood lust in the men, the eagerness to do death, to cru
sh, to destroy, to trample, and it was that lust which decided him.
He said, “The situation is very serious, my good centurion. And so I will not deprive you of a single man in this search. As a physician I understand the gravity of the matter. I live not very far from here. In the meantime that wretch is escaping. Go at once on your pursuit.”
The centurion hesitated. The son of Diodorus Cyrinus was an important and honored man, and a physician. He should be guarded. But Lucanus loomed over him, tall and young and strong, and he was armed. The centurion smiled and saluted, and soldiers and men rushed back up the street in the crimson banners of their torches and were gone, roaring like an avalanche.
Lucanus waited until the street was silent again. Not a single light had appeared in the dark windows high above the walls, not a single stranger had emerged, not a hidden door had opened, in spite of the noise. This was a black and sinister place, and the inhabitants had discreetly kept their peace within their houses and their walls. Lucanus returned to the door cautiously, glanced up and down the street, then lifted the latch and let himself quickly into the circular courtyard.