In the meanwhile, Miriam, within, was listening, with a smile of grim delight, to a swarthy and weather-beaten young Jew.
“I knew, mother in Israel, that all depended on my pace; and night and day I rode from Ostia toward Tarentum: but the messenger of the uncircumcised was better mounted than I; I therefore bribed a certain slave to lame his horse, and passed him by a whole stage on the second day. Nevertheless, by night the Philistine had caught me up again, the evil angels helping him; and my soul was mad within me.”
“And what then, Jonadab Bar-Zebudah?”
“I bethought me of Ehud, and of Joab also, when he was pursued by Asahel, and considered much of the lawfulness of the deed, not being a man of blood. Nevertheless, we were together in the darkness, and I smote him.”
Miriam clapped her hands.
“Then putting on his clothes, and taking his letters and credentials, as was but reasonable, I passed myself off for the messenger of the emperor, and so rode the rest of that journey at the expense of the heathen; and I hereby return you the balance saved.”
“Never mind the balance. Keep it, thou worthy son of Jacob. What next?”
“When I came to Tarentum, I sailed in the galley which I had chartered from certain sea-robbers. Valiant men they were, nevertheless, and kept true faith with me. For when we had come halfway, rowing with all our might, behold another galley coming in our wake and about to pass us by, which I knew for an Alexandrian, as did the captain also, who assured me that she had come from hence to Brundusium with letters from Orestes.”
“Well?”
“It seemed to me both base to be passed, and more base to waste all the expense wherewith you and our elders had charged themselves; so I took counsel with the man of blood, offering him over and above our bargain, two hundred gold pieces of my own, which please to pay to my account with Rabbi Ezekiel, who lives by the watergate in Pelusium. Then the pirates, taking counsel, agreed to run down the enemy; for our galley was a sharp-beaked Liburnian, while theirs was only a messenger trireme.”
“And you did it?”
“Else had I not been here. They were delivered into our hands, so that we struck them full in mid-length, and they sank like Pharaoh and his host.”
“So perish all the enemies of the nation!” cried Miriam. “And now it is impossible, you say, for fresh news to arrive for these ten days?”
“Impossible, the captain assured me, owing to the rising of the wind, and the signs of southerly storm.”
“Here, take this letter for the Chief Rabbi, and the blessing of a mother in Israel. Thou hast played the man for thy people; and thou shalt go to the grave full of years and honours, with menservants and maidservants, gold and silver, children and children’s children, with thy foot on the necks of heathens, and the blessing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to eat of the goose which is fattening in the desert, and the Leviathan which lieth in the great sea, to be meat for all true Israelites at the last day.”
And the Jew turned and went out, perhaps, in his simple fanaticism, the happiest man in Egypt at that moment.
He passed out through the antechamber, leering at the slave-girls, and scowling at Philammon; and the youth was ushered into the presence of Miriam.
She sat, coiled up like a snake on a divan writing busily in a tablet upon her knees while on the cushions beside her glittered splendid jewels, which she had been fingering over as a child might its toys. She did not look up for a few minutes; and Philammon could not help, in spite of his impatience, looking round the little room and contrasting its dirty splendour, and heavy odour of wine, and food, and perfumes, with the sunny grace and cleanliness of Greek houses. Against the wall stood presses and chests fretted with fantastic Oriental carving; illuminated rolls of parchment lay in heaps in a corner; a lamp of strange form hung from the ceiling, and shed a dim and lurid light upon an object which chilled the youth’s blood for a moment—a bracket against the wall, on which, in a plate of gold, engraven with mystic signs, stood the mummy of an infant’s head; one of those teraphim, from which, as Philammon knew, the sorcerers of the East professed to evoke oracular responses.
At last she looked up, and spoke in a shrill, harsh voice. “Well, my fair boy, and what do you want with the poor old proscribed Jewess? Have you coveted yet any of the pretty things which she has had the wit to make her slave-demons save from the Christian robbers?”
Philammon’s tale was soon told. The old woman listened, watching him intently with her burning eye; and then answered slowly—
“Well, and what if you are a slave?”
“Am I one, then? Am I?”
“Of course you are. Arsenius spoke truth. I saw him buy you at Ravenna, just fifteen years ago. I bought your sister at the same time. She is two-and-twenty now. You were four years younger than her, I should say.”
“Oh heavens! and you know my sister still! Is she Pelagia?”
“You were a pretty boy,” went on the hag, apparently not hearing him. “If I had thought you were going to grow up as beautiful and as clever as you are, I would have bought you myself. The Goths were just marching, and Arsenius gave only eighteen gold pieces for you—or twenty—I am growing old, and forget everything, I think. But there would have been the expense of your education, and your sister cost me in training—oh what sums? Not that she was not worth the money—no, no, the darling!”
“And you know where she is? Oh tell me—in the name of mercy tell me!”
“Why, then?”
“Why, then? Have you not
