CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Marcus stood in the spring sun that flooded over the gardens in Arpinum. He leaned against an oak tree and reread a letter from Noë ben Joel, who had lived for over a year in Jerusalem with his family.

“Greetings to the noble Marcus Tullius Cicero from Noë ben Joel:

“I received your last letter with delight in your increasing success. Fortunate it is that you have obtained clients who can enrich you with gifts. As a remembrance, and in eternal gratitude to you, my father is sending you several jars of those little black Judean olives which you appreciate, and several kegs of costly oil—which you cannot obtain in Rome under present conditions, and which are worth their weight in gold. Moreover, I am sending you many lengths of Egyptian white and colored linen, a scroll of the Phaedo inscribed by a Jewish scholar of singular note, and quite excellent, for your father, two bracelets of silver wire encrusted with precious stones—an art in which my countrymen excel—for your lady mother, and a shield embossed with the arms of your family for your brother, Quintus. Accept these, dear friend, from the hearts of those who love you and who yearn to look upon your face again.

“We have just celebrated the first birthday of my son, Joshua, in my father’s house where, as you know, we all live. It was a tranquil occasion. The Roman proconsul, a worthy man, and a friend of my father’s, attended the festivities. He presented my son with a beautiful Roman short-sword sheathed in a jeweled scabbard. My father was uncertain how to express his gratitude—if he possessed any—but as usual I was swift with my fluent tongue and the innocent Roman was pleased. It occupies a place of honor in the household.

“I am not sorry to linger here awhile, in the golden shadow of the towered Temple and among my people. I had feared, as you know, the stern life and presence of my countrymen in Jerusalem who are enamored of God and not of life. But the Hellenistic influence is very powerful among the younger Jews of family, who have many friends among the Greeks householded in the city. They speak Greek more often than they speak Aramaic, and Latin more than they speak Hebrew, the language of the learned men. My father was perturbed in the beginning, and he fears for his country. But the Hellenistic spirit receives sympathy here. There appears a greater similarity between the arête of the Greeks and the spiritual virtu of the Jews than between the cool unity of the classicism of Athens and the heated versicolor of Rome. Even my father perceives this, though he is a man of singular stubbornness. He spends hours each day in the gates with the wise men, who discuss the almost instant arrival of the Messias, who will, of course, drive every Roman and Greek and other alien from within the sacred precincts of these yellow walls, and lift up Jerusalem on the wings of archangels to rule the lesser tribes of the earth. I think of Rome, and smile.

“I have done as you requested and have sought out more prophesies of the Messias for you. There are many Egyptian merchants here, and I have made their acquaintance, for they must be civil in Jerusalem while conducting their business. They tell me that an ancient Pharaoh, Aton, prophesied that Horus will descend from heaven to take on the flesh of a man and lead all men to justice, love, peace and faith, and reconcile them to their God. I have also made the acquaintance of Indu traders who linger here awhile, resting between their ships, and they have informed me that their Gita, which vaguely resembles our Torah, declares that man is corrupt from his conception, and by no effort of his own can he elevate his state. He is evil from the hour he draws breath, for he was conceived in evil, he lives in evil, and he dies in evil, and shall suffer death, except that on some far day God may rescue him from his foreordained wickedness. Again, possibly, when some god takes on the flesh of man and leads him to grace.

“I have heard that Hammurabi, the great Babylonia king, says in his Code: ‘How can man free himself from the evil of himself? By contemplation of God, by penitence and penance, by confession of sins, by the power of God, only. On a fated day God will manifest Himself to the eyes of men, in their own flesh.’

“You will observe the entwining theme in these prophesies and words of wisdom: The wickedness of man, his lack of grace, his sentence to eternal death, and his possible rescue by a compassionate God who will take on the flesh of mankind. You will recall, in this frame of reference, the words of Aristotle: “There is no good in mankind, save that which is vouchsafed it from God, by virtue of God and by His loving kindness. For man was born to evil, and he cannot free himself from the web of iniquity without God, no matter his striving or his good will.’

“My father delights that I seek the company of the wise men in the gates, but I seek it to gather news for you concerning the Messias. I have read the books of Isaias pertaining to Him, He Who will be born of the Jews. Writes Isaias: ‘For a Child is born to us, and a Son is given to us, and the government is upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace. His empire shall be multiplied, and there shall be no end of peace. He shall sit upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom, to establish it and strengthen it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth and forever.’

“However, alas, it appears that, according to Isaias, there will be few who will know Him and follow Him, when He has taken flesh, and when He dwells among men. Isaias writes: ‘Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? And He shall grow up as a tender plant before Him, and as a root out of a thirsty ground. There is no beauty in Him, nor comeliness, and we have seen Him and there was no sightliness that we should be desirous of Him. Despised, and the most abject of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity, and His look was as it were hidden and despised. Whereupon we esteemed Him not.’

“But, my dear Marcus, when have men esteemed the truly great among them, and when have they honored the just and the noble? They prefer those who come with heralds and banners and the thunders of the drum, and with servants before them, crying out the praises of him who rides in the gilded chariot behind several horses with gemmed harness. If the Messias appears, as Isaias prophesies, as a Man of humility, not overwhelming in beauty, not with the hosannahs of angels echoing on all His steps, He surely will be despised and rejected by those whom He has come to save. For man strikes the Image of God on the base metal of his own heart. Would God descend to man in mercy and love without clouds of angelic attendants, armed and terrible, crowned with the sun? No, He would not.

“Isaias continues: ‘Surely, He hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows, and we have thought Him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed. He was offered because it was His own will, and He opened not His mouth. He shall be led as a sheep before His shearer, and He shall not open His mouth.’

“Apparently, then, the Messias will be done to death in a most dreadful fashion by blind and ignorant men, for He will not come with panoply and in the company of the Seraphim and with the cloak of celestial majesty on His shoulders. What shall He say, in those days, and who will listen? He is the Covenant between God and man. He will be, as Isaias writes, ‘a light unto the Gentiles’ also. But who will know Him?

“It is possible that I shall see Him, and you. By what mark shall we recognize Him? Shall we remember the prophesies? Or shall we say, ‘There is no beauty in Him—no sightliness that we should be desirous of Him?’

“I have heard these prophesies all my life, and have not credited them, for I am a skeptical Jew, and a Roman citizen acquainted with many religions. Nor do the aristocratic and the men of religion in Jerusalem give heed to the prophesies any longer. It is only the old men in the gates of the city, who ponder and look at the dark heavens, and wait with growing impatience. Will they recognize Him when He comes? The children read of Him in their books, and recite the prophesies. Will they know Him?

“Yes, there is an air of excitement in the city, as if news of a mighty King has gone before Him. Who can understand this?

“You, I believe, my dear Marcus, would find Israel not only interesting but agreeable, in climate and in atmosphere. Joppa, on the Great Sea, is worth a visit of a month at the very least, if only to contemplate the sunsets each day. Regarding the celestial conflagrations, the great and silent awesomeness reflected in the sea, one can repeat with David, ‘—the work of His fingers, the moon and the stars which He hath ordained—what is man that Thou are mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visited him?’ Even I ask that unanswered question: Surely it is presumptuous for us to believe that God cares for us!

“Jerusalem is the heart of our nation, a dusty, colorful, teeming, crowded, odoriferous, noisy heart, intolerably hot during the day, and desert-cool at night. Here are many peoples, not only Jews; traders, merchants, scoundrels, mountebanks, bankers, historians, soldiers, sailors, businessmen, antiquarians from all over the world, Syrians, Romans, Samaritans, Jordinians, Egyptians, Indus, Greeks, and only God knows what else. So long as they observe the Judean law, they are ignored and despised. The Jew, like the Roman, loves Law. ‘God has said, He has revealed,’ state the wise old men dogmatically, and let that alien beware who disputes it! The Jews have no laws but the Law of God. We are a Theocracy, and it is wonderful to observe. One would think that in a Theocracy there would be no disputations. But the wise old men in the gates weave commentaries and subtle webs over the simplest of the Commandments. God speaks plainly, but man must always be devious, and ask a thousand ‘whys’ and give a thousand answers.

“As Jews are violent and intense by nature, the Romans respect their convictions. A dead people are not profitable to Rome, so Romans are careful not to insist on what the Jews call idolatry in Jerusalem. Coins struck here bear the head of no god, and Jews are not pressed into the Roman armies as they are in other countries. So long as Jews pay reasonable taxes the Romans do not disturb them. On the contrary, they are friendly, and many Roman officers are married to Jewish girls.

“Your Polybius would have delighted in Judea, where we have free schools for all youths and where universal learning is obligatory. I am not certain this is wise. It puffs up the ignorant who are incapable of true learning. If they acquire the words of the Law they do not understand its spirit. Many are there who are born mentally illiterate, and they have a place in the world. But they are like ravens, whose tongues are split, who learn words but not their meaning. Who is more dangerous than a man who can quote wisdom but who does not know how to apply it in his own life, and in his government? But at least we are profound in one way: we insist that all men, even the rabbis, must learn a trade and must work, no matter the wealth of the family. Beware of the man of the colonnades, who does not labor at anything with his hands! Beware even more of the rich and idle man, who has time to develop a lust for power to fill his empty days! The Jews know this. Therefore, we work. I manage my father’s gardens, I who knew nothing of the earth and the seasons and growing things until I came to Jerusalem.

“It is much more vociferous even than Rome, for we are a small country and are desperately crowded in the city. Jerusalem is like a hive of bees; one cell is packed upon another; one could run over the whole city on the rooftops without touching one’s feet to the ground. In truth, from the top of our yellow walls we seem to see nothing but heaving roofs extending into the gold and dusty distance, broken here and there by groves of cypresses and carob trees and palms, like oases. All the roofs are yellow or white, rising and falling blankly, except after sunset when they are crowded with people sitting or standing on them to catch the evening air. Then music bursts forth from various houses and the city resounds with a vast humming, and a trumpet shatters at intervals from the temple. We are locked within our yellowish and twisting walls, and hear the calls of the guards who pace the tops.

“Beyond the gates are the theatres which the Greeks or the Romans have built. The Greeks produce plays; the Romans produce bloody spectacles. One would deduce that the one was civilized, the other barbarous. This is a superficial judgment. Greek cruelty shines and glitters and sparkles in the erudite comedies. Who was it that said all laughter is cruel, even when it appears most harmless? For laughter must have an object, preferably man or men, to excite it, and who but an obtuse man can contemplate the predicament of humanity without compassion? There is no compassion in laughter. Gayety is an entirely different matter; it is innocent and does not caricature, does not mock, does not deride. It is amused at the antics of man, but not man himself. You will see that I have changed. I, being only a man however, delight in the Greek plays, tragic or comic. I attend the presentations regularly, and so do other young Jews influenced by Hellenism. But not even the Greeks attend the Roman spectacles, except to observe, and deplore with disgust. As you know, crucifixion is a Roman method of execution. The Romans regularly produce spectacles of mass crucifixion of criminals, including Jews. They ask the Jews who violently object: ‘Is this worse than your method, which is stoning to death?”

“I have written several plays, in which comedy is entwined with tragedy, and the Greeks have received them with considerable acclaim. But I must do it all anonymously, because of my parents. I have made parodies of the most weighty of Greek plays, including Oedipus Rex and Elektra, and even the Romans laughed at them heartily, though Romans are not notable for their sense of humor. They prefer buffoons and clowns and broad situations to subtleties, and does this not argue that there remains some primitiveness in them? The Greeks love games, but they prefer the games which display the human form in agile grace, and are not mainly tests of strength. But then, in Rome power rings on stone. In Greece beauty stands in marble.

“Still, I long for Rome. My father wishes to see his daughters there, and their husbands and children. He intends not to engage in business on his return. He said to me, ‘If one is to live to a peaceful old age, one must not become known to governments. Let not the eye of politicians alight on you!’ I believe him.

“Dear friend, be cautious and circumspect. Do not arouse more animosity than you can afford. We send our affection to you, and our blessings.”

Marcus rerolled the letter with a powerful feeling of love for his friend. But he also smiled. Noë’s concern for him was ludicrous. He was only a modestly successful young lawyer, now almost the sole support of his family through the gifts of grateful clients. (Some could not give him a copper.) He had practiced his profession for hardly more than a year. Clients came to his house on the Carinae, or to the house of Scaevola. The old pontifex maximus had given him a small room in his house, austerely furnished with but a table and two chairs, and shelves for his books of law, and with no window and no light except for a dim lamp. For this, Marcus paid his mentor a little but regular fee. The room was stifling even in the winter, for no air came except that which wafted through the door, which must be closed during consultations and confidences. Inevitably, it stank of sweat and parchment and damp stone and’ burning oil. “The odor of learning,” said Scaevola with a solemn face. “Or, perhaps, the odor of perfidy. When was a lawyer not perfidious, especially in these days?”

He had had many arguments with Marcus concerning clients. “What?” he exclaimed. “You will not take a client who is overtly a criminal? But, have you not agreed that even criminals are entitled to just representation before the law? What a fool you are, Apollo. But I should not call you Apollo. The Apollonian light shines without restraint on all men, but your light would shine only on the just. Pah.”

“I have no hesitancy in defending criminals,” Marcus had protested. “But I must be assured that in the particular crime under discussion the man is innocent of it, no matter his past. How, then, can I defend him with all my might?”

“He is still entitled to representation. Put aside your scruples, or you will never be a rich man. But you do not care for riches!”

In this, Scaevola was wrong. Marcus had begun to care for riches, for he was by nature prudent and did not deprecate the idea that a man was worthy of his labors. He had a family which must be protected. Still, he could not bring any eloquence to his command in behalf of a man obviously guilty of a foul deed.

“It is the credo of lawyers that no man they defend is guilty, in spite of the facts,” Scaevola said. “It is a matter of a little juggling in your mind.”

Marcus could not toss clubs in his mind to form a pattern he desired. “I am no juggler,” he said, to which Scaevola replied, “Then, you are no lawyer.” He added, “If you defend only those you believe to be guiltless of the crime of which they are accused you will want for bread. Remember, a man is innocent until proved guilty before a magistrate. That is Roman law. Law is an exercise in wits. It is like a combat in an arena, my simpleton.”

Marcus understood, and it caused him anxiety for his future.

“A lawyer must believe he is cleverer than other men, and particularly that he is more astute than a magistrate. But, you have no sense of irony. Who knows what was the intention of the formers of the laws? An intelligent lawyer must interpret them for the benefit of his client.”

But Marcus was tremendously concerned by the fact that the tyrant, Cinna, was reinterpreting the strong, masculine, and just laws of old Rome. Even Cinna did not dare flout the written law and Constitution, but he had a host of subservient lawyers eternally busy in the reinterpretation of them. This would lead inevitably to chaos, injustice and outrage, and inevitable tyranny. The law stated that a man’s property was inviolate. But Cinna’s new tax laws violated that ancient provision of a proud country. A man’s property, it now appeared, was inviolate only against private thieves. But not against the government, which was engaged in constant and giant theft, sucking up the people’s substance and returning only sewage and debt. It did this with unchallenged impunity, and modern Romans did not protest; this demonstrated the pusillanimity to which they had descended. The populace now extolled the Gracchi, who had robbed the industrious of corn for the idle and profligate. No doubt the Gracchi had been virtuous men in their private lives. But their minds had been corrupted by sentimentality. They had been stoned to death by an infuriated people, and for a long time their execution had appeared just. Now they were heroes of a degraded populace, which despised honorable labor and preferred free bread and circuses.

Not for the first time did Marcus realize that governments are enemies of the people. Now, as he stood in the spring sunshine on his paternal island, he considered the Theocracy of Judea, of which Noë had written him. Laws not based on the Law of God were evil laws. The end was national death.

How long would Rome endure, his beloved country?

He held the letter of Noë in his hand as he leaned against the sacred oak, and looked with trouble at the rushing river, lemon-colored in the light of spring. But a musing part of his brain engaged itself in admiration of the scene and the season. Spring was golden, not green. The tender tufts of trees gleamed with yellow, and shrubs and bushes burst into the fair light in all shades and hues from amber to primrose, from delicate gilt to glimmering honey. The whole appeared to have been plunged into aureate springs, then lifted again into place between its two rivers which rejected it and the daffodil-tinted sky. Only the grass, faintly emerald, disturbed the gilded appearance, the frail golden showers drooping from willow and birch, the tight golden stars of poplars and oaks. The view of Arpinum across the river seemed drenched in shadowy gold as it climbed hills still brazen from winter. Summer and autumn were not so fragrant as spring, so jubilant in the renewed celebration of life. The earth exhaled and the heart stirred, even the heart of a young and troubled and somewhat despondent Roman.

He looked at the bridge that led to the mainland, the arched bridge of memory, and he thought of Livia. He thought of her as he remembered her more than ten years ago, a maiden of wildness and fragility, with glowing hair and strange blue eyes and virgin breast. As his mother had prophesied she remained forever young and chaste to him, safe from years and time, safe from sorrow and change. The faint spring wind sounded like her remembered song, unearthly and pure and pondering. Like the nymphs on many Grecian vases she was pursued but forever uncaught. She was a dream that did not pass, and she left no shadow.

As he thought this the old savage sickness took him again, the old unappeased longing. He felt that he was in a large vessel, inexorably moving down the river while Livia stood on the island as a maiden, with hair and palla flowing in the wind, her hand upraised in farewell. He fled with time; she remained as a pure hue always imprisoned, yet shining, in Alexandrian glass. All about him was in activity, but where Livia stood the trees did not change their color, the sky did not darken or flame in dawn and sunset, the sun did not arch from horizon to horizon. It was always spring, and she was forever young and forever lost. The river took him away, but Livia sang her song to the wind and eternity.

He had learned sternly to shut the lid of his mind upon Livia, as one shuts the lid of a jeweled box upon a treasure and then forgets it for a while. But there was something about the light today, the descending sun, the scent of the earth, that held up the lid against his pressing hands. Livia lived; she was not a dream at all. It did not matter that no one spoke her name to him in Rome, that he did not know where she dwelled, or even if she lived at all any longer. She was a breathing presence to him; he heard her voice, clear and a little mocking, as he remembered it. He felt, if he only turned his head quickly in that Umbrian light he would see Livia again, like a dryad under the trees, fleet as a breath, as radiant as a vision. “Livia,” he said aloud. He did not turn his head, but he was certain that some emanation of her was near him, like the dear ghost of one who was dead yet lived. The Livia he knew and loved was not the wife of Lucius Sergius Catilina, having an existence under some unknown roof, forgetting him, busy with random things and apprehensions. She was Livia, and she had no other name. She was bound to his spirit as a vine is bound to a tree. His mother urged him to marry, for Quintus was in the army and he might be killed. The name of the Ciceroni lived still formless in his loins.

He knew, however, that he must marry some day, for the sake of unborn sons. But that time was not now, while Livia still embraced him in dreams and fantasies. To marry would be to commit adultery. He had a fear that marriage would take from him something ineffable, something poetic which fell like a brilliant shower still on the mundane city of reality. The random woman in Rome, yes. But—not yet!—a wife on the hearth and at a loom in his house. Livia still occupied all the rooms of his heart.

The spring wind was becoming cooler; he could feel it even through his wool cloak and in the folds of his long blue tunic and in the crevices of his leather shoes. The light was not so ardent now; it was fading from the walls and cherry roofs of Arpinum. The river sang; it was darkening to hurrying brown. He could hear the lowing of distant cattle as they came from the meadows. He heard the lonely voices of sheep. Eunice and, Athos would be directing the five slaves who lived with them on the duties of the evening. He must leave this bank, this golden forest, and return to the farmhouse for his supper. And then, silent and bereft, he would sit in what once was his father’s library and read before retiring to his empty bed.

Yet, as if imposed on this scene, on this time, the aureate island remained, with its lovely dryad who never departed. It was to know this vision again that he had returned to the island through dangerous villages and towns, in this most dangerous time, against the pleas of his mother and her warnings. But no one disturbed Eunice and her diligent Athos. They lived in peace, and it was this peace he had sought. There were moments when he had found it. There were moments when he forgot the war, when he forgot the courts, forgot even his parents and his brother. He lived in amber. Each night he said, I must return, and each morning was a new day that was a replica of the one that had gone before. It was not only love for the island and its tranquillity that held him here. It was a dream and the dream was all that mattered. Eurydice was here, in fields of asphodels, and he recoiled from climbing up to a world of clangor and duties and grief, and the harsh ring of power and the hot exigencies of men. He must return, as did Orpheus, leaving Eurydice forever behind. But not today! And surely not tomorrow.

Loneliness, with diaphanous forms of delight, was to him as yet preferable to plangent life. He had not come in vain. The island of dreams was more real to him, more desirable, more blissful, than anything the world of Rome could offer him, even if it were power and fortune. Here he could write the poems and the delicate essays that had gained a publisher for him in Rome. He wondered, sometimes, if all men kept a dream within them even to great age, if all had a secret island where their limbs were free and they looked upon other suns and stared at other moons. If they did not, then they had truly died.

He did not hear the stealthy glide of a large boat near him. He did not start at the fierce eyes that gazed at him. He was listening to the choruses of song in the trees; he was watching the urgent flight of birds against the sky. So he heard no hushed footstep creeping upon him. The citron light was sparkling on the upper houses of Arpinum, and the west was a lake of gold on which floated rosy mist.

When he felt iron arms suddenly seize him he could not believe it. So, at first, he only dimly struggled, numbly outraged. He was not frightened. He turned his head and saw four men in cloaks about him, the hoods falling over and concealing all but their mouths, which were cruel and triumphant. One of the men struck him sharply in the face, and he tried to recoil. But they held him. Another spoke angrily, “No, there must be no mar, no sign! Restrain yourself.”

He did not recognize the voice. For an instant he thought these men were his own slaves; there were rumors that slaves were in revolt all over Italy against their masters. But another man said, “We must do what we must do, as it was commanded. Let us be quick about it, for I hear the bark of a dog, and who knows what brute will burst out upon us.” The voice was not rude as the voice of a slave. It had the cultivated accents of Rome. He, still incredulous, looked down at the hands that held him in such an immovable grip. They were not the hands of slaves, though they were strong. In a wildly clarified light he saw that one hand bore a ring, and it was a handsome ring artfully contrived.

“What is this?” he cried. “Who are you? Unhand me, animals!” He thought of thieves, of vagabonds, of criminals from Arpinum. He opened his mouth to shout for help, but instantly a wad of cloth was forced between his teeth.

It was then that for the first time he thought: Death.

He struggled with all his strength, forcing his feet into the cool and yielding earth. Now he cursed his former supercilious attitude concerning physical prowess and dexterous throwing and heaving by using the strength of the antagonist against him. However, sudden and terrible fear gave him some strength; once he actually broke away from his captors, but they soon seized him again, laughing gleefully between their teeth. Panting, he tried to see their faces in the shadow of the hoods, but he saw only their violent mouths.

They began to strip him, very carefully, holding him strongly against his struggles, as if they wished not to tear his garments. One removed his cloak, folded it and laid it down neatly on the grass. Another took from him, very dexterously, his long tunic and unfastened his leather girdle and purse with its few coins. These were placed in an orderly fashion on his cloak. They unlaced his shoes, put them side by side beside the heap of clothing. Marcus was so fascinated by this meticulous arranging of his effects that he stood still to watch in the clutch of the restraining arms. One man reached for the golden amulet of Pallas Athene which Aurelia Caesar had given him so long ago, but another man said, “No, he would not remove that, his amulet, while swimming. It would be his protection.”

Then Marcus understood that he was to have an accident, and that explained the fact that no sharp knife or dagger had been used to dispatch him surely and at once.

“His feet must not be soiled with earth or scratched with stones,” said one of the men who was apparently the leader. So Marcus was lifted in strong arms and carried to the bank of the river, which was now suddenly on fire with the sunset. He was laid almost lovingly in the boat, his ankles and feet held in hard hands. Then two of the men stealthily rowed to the middle of the river, while Marcus looked despairingly at the flaming sky and prayed for help and life. Death, in the abstract, had never seemed horrible to him, for he could philosophize with Socrates that a good man had nothing to fear in this life nor the next. Now, in his youth, he was overwhelmed with terror. Nothing mattered to him but that he must survive. He felt the sliding of the boat over the hurrying waters; the current was very swift here and would be arduous even for the most accomplished swimmers, and as the river had been fed by icy springs from the mountains it would be deathly cold and paralyzing even to one of great muscular power. Quintus, himself, the mighty swimmer, never ventured into the river until summer was on the land.

“The current is furious,” said one of the rowers in a tone of satisfaction. “He will not linger long.”

The air was already chill upon Marcus’ bare flesh, but he sweated with fear and dread as he was held in the bottom of the boat. Two of the rowers were carefully examining the island to be certain that there were no watchers, no one who could raise an alarm. Now the waters rocked the boat impatiently, and waves slapped the sides.

“Would it not be better to wait for twilight?” asked one of the men.

“No, for at twilight he would be missed and there would be searchers, with dogs,” replied another impatiently. “It must be done speedily.”

The rowers had reached the center of the narrow river. They turned broadside to the current to hold the vessel. The four men regarded Marcus without animosity; he could feel the intensity of their hidden eyes. They smiled at him almost in a friendly fashion. “Drowning,” said one, “is not an unpleasant death. There are worse ways to die. Be grateful that we did not disembowel you or strip your flesh from your bones.”

Marcus’ eyes, staring and changeful blue as they faced the sky and his captors, looked fearfully on the men. They reached for him and lifted him again in their arms and slowly slipped his body in the water, maintaining hold under his armpits. Then, quickly, one pulled the gag of cloth from his mouth. But before he could shout they had pushed his head under the bitter water, and one grasped his long brown hair by the crown. Instinctively he had closed his mouth the moment the river had covered it and held his breath.

He could see his white body flowing and bending in the water like the body of one who is already dead. He could see a school of silvery fish and scaly bodies scraped his own in flight like birds. The river instantly numbed his flesh with its cold so that it had no feeling. His lungs began to strain so that he hardly felt the pain that flashed through his scalp. Then he came to himself madly. In some way he must tear himself loose from the grip in his hair. It seemed most necessary to do this, if only to avoid the ignominy of being passively drowned, though surely he would drown’ on the moment of escape. He was not a good swimmer, though Quintus had vainly tried to teach him, and had been offended at Marcus’ jest that there was no Hero waiting to greet him with loving arms. He cursed himself for his past stupidity.

His lungs swelled in protest at the inheld breath and his ears appeared to be on the point of bursting. What! Was he to die without fighting for his life at the very least? He flexed his muscles in a spasm of frightful panic; he pretended to go limp, glancing with half-shut eyes at the distorted figures of his murderers through the upper water. They were not speaking now. They were only waiting for him to die.

They had judged him as a poor and flaccid thing, so that argued that they knew of him if only by report. He made his body waver feebly in the river, as if already dead. He closed his eyes. He opened his mouth, but shut larynx against the water; the river lapped his tongue and his palate. As he had hoped and prayed, the hand that gripped his hair relaxed a little. Instantly, he wrenched his head down and forward; agonizing pain lanced through his skull as some of his hair was detached. His heart roared and thundered in his breast. He sank down into the waters, which were partly obscured by the mud torn from the hills. Then the current seized him and he was swept away.

But now he must breathe for his life’s sake. He thrust out his legs, and cramps bound them. Nevertheless, he was in such terror that he came to the surface. He could think of nothing but expelling his breath and inhaling the air of life. Th sky above him was a sheet of flame and reflected on his bluish face. He drew in a deep breath with a strangling sound. He heard a subdued yell. His murderers had seen him and he turned his head as he instinctively trod water. All four men now had seized oars and were rushing down the river toward him in their boat. He heard them cursing. He wanted to shout but knew he must spare his breath, and he was too far from the shore to be heard. The torture of his spasmodic muscles almost killed him as it was. Only by the most superhuman efforts could he keep them moving. He prayed frenziedly as he had never prayed before.

He waited until the boat was almost upon him before he let himself sink below it again. The current spun him as a wounded bird, falling, spins in the vault as it plummets to earth. He saw the murky water, felt the pounding of it against his icy flesh. Above him, he saw the shadow of the searching boat, like an avenging cloud. Forcing himself, he swam deeply away from it. His arms and legs screamed like separate entities, and he needed air again. If I live, he thought dimly, I shall become a veritable Leander!

The water was so muddy that he could no longer see the bottom of the boat, and he struggled to the surface again. To his horror his shoulder, uprising, hit the side of the boat. Then his head emerged from the river, and he drew a groaning breath.

The men, now infuriated at his escape and intent only on his death, lifted oars to smash his skull. He saw the wet blades, bloody in the light of the sunset, upheld over him. He let himself sink again. His heart labored. He could endure this little longer. Vague thoughts brushed through his mind soothingly. How easy it would be to die, to hold himself far down in the water and sleep, to escape this horror, to drift down the river—and to sleep, alone and in peace. Why should he struggle? What was life? A dream, a painful fantasy, a delusion, a weariness. He let his body drift with the hastening current, and jagged splinters of red and gold light flashed behind his closed eyelids.

Then his grandfather’s voice—that voice stilled years ago—thundered in his dulling ears. “You will die supinely, like a slave? You will not fight for life, as a Roman and a man?”

His feet brushed the stoney bottom of the river. His grandfather’s voice was all about him, imperative, full of scorn. But, I am tired, my body is numbed and dead and full of agony, his mind replied. “Arise!” cried his grandfather. He could not disobey. He moved his legs and his arms feebly, and rose sluggishly to the surface. His glaucous eyes saw that the boat was at a considerable distance. But the men had seen his wet head, as one sees the head of a seal. They swung the boat about and pursued him. Again, he waited until they were almost upon him, and again he bent his body and let himself sink.

How long could this deathly game continue until he died? The shore had appeared miles away. He had drifted and swam near the keel of the island. For one instant he had seen the quiet meadows, the tops of distant trees scarlet in the sunset, the toy white farmhouse, the inflamed hills. Never had they appeared so dear, yet never had they appeared so like a mirage. He was like one who gazes on the precious earth for the last time before retreating into the darkness of death. Surely, he could not resist the pull of the river. Even if he lived a while longer he would be swept into the main river, too far to reach any shore again.

His failing lungs demanded air. But he could hear the boat above him, the swishing of oars, though he could not see them.

“God!” his failing mind prayed. Now he must come to the surface again, even at the deadly risk of a quicker murder than drowning. The water appeared alive with rainbows, rushing and merging into each other, embracing him, heavily dragging him down. But he moved; he drifted to the surface. To his fainting surprise he saw that he was some distance from the boat. However, the men had seen him. He breathed deeply. The island was a golden ship moving away from him. Again, filling his lungs, he waited until he saw the upraised oars, then bent his head and let himself fall.

The current, hastening toward the sea, was a wall of force. He let himself be carried by it, under its roof. He began to dream, long soundless dreams. His body no longer tortured him; his lungs no longer seemed to shriek for air. He was like a wisp of cloud, floating mindlessly. He no more had any identity.

Then, there was a savage tug at his throat, a ripping along his flesh. He opened his mouth to cry out and water rushed into it, strangling him, setting him to flailing. A second later and the blessed air succeeded the water, and he was coughing and choking, but helpless to move. Something had seized him brutally, had lifted his lips horizontally above the water. It was still tugging at his neck. The back part of his head was below water, and his ears. Only his eyes and his lips and nose had emerged, so that he remained unseen in the waves.

He was so dazed, so exhausted, so dulled, that he could do nothing for a while but float like a cadaver, held by that which forced his mouth above water. He could not see; clouds moved over his eyes. He felt disembodied. The river flowed about and around him but could not take him again. He forgot his murderers; he forgot the boat and even why he was here. His body relaxed, conscious only of a cutting sensation and grip at the base of his skull, and something scratching along his flesh as if he were being flayed alive.

Then he remembered. He turned his head in the water and saw the boat, diminished and tiny now, at a long distance. It was being rowed toward the bridge, the bridge that was so small that a man could hold it in his hand. The sky was darkening to deep and misty crimson. The island was a little ship with foam at its keel. The waters had many manly voices, questioning, drumming answers, crying, chuckling. And Marcus floated, helplessly, held by he knew not what.

Then, as if something had struck his mind like an impatient fist, he came alive once more. He saw that a great tree had floated down the river from some place far in the hills, and its trunk had been lodged in rocks at the bottom of the river. It was not visible from the surface. But the highest twigs had caught Marcus’ amulet as he had drifted, had lifted him so that his lips and eyes had emerged. This had saved his life; his murderers had finally been satisfied that he had drowned, for his head had not risen again. They must have waited for some time. Marcus was conscious that many long minutes had passed while he had been held, like some dead bird, at the top of the tangled tree. His cautious eye saw the boat land on the Arpinum shore, though all was cloudy dull crimson now. He saw the men pulling the boat up on the shore, little figures so far that they were scarcely longer than one of his fingers. Then they were lost and gone in the thickening fog of land and water, and he was alone with only the thousand voices of the river in his ears.

The river was a heavy green here, smoking with mist. Marcus’ body began to smart unendurably. The dead twigs and branches of the top of the tree had torn his skin, and no doubt he was bleeding. His arms felt like iron, but he forced them to move, to grasp the blessed tree. He clutched it, relieving the tug on his neck of the chained amulet. He wound his legs about a branch. He waited, and rested. Now the water no longer seemed cold as circulation returned to his body. Then his heart shivered once more.

He was so very far from the island. Twilight was falling rapidly. Only a smudge of reddened light illuminated the west. Stars were creeping out, and the edge of a rounded moon. The water lifted and dropped him, and the tree wavered.

“Be reasonable,” he said aloud in a thin voice. “You cannot remain here. You will die of exposure. What then is left for a sensible man? He will swim to the island. Oh? It is impossible? But God saved you, therefore it is not impossible.”

Noë ben Joel had said that nothing was impossible with God. God had preserved him, therefore he must labor with the hand of God, in gratitude. Nevertheless, it demanded all his courage to disentangle the chain of his amulet from the saving twigs. His fingers seemed three times the size of normal fingers; they groped thickly and heavily. At last he was free, but he again embraced the branch. A curious fish nudged his toes and nibbled at them. The darkness came down on the waters like a cloak. He must go now, or be lost in the night forever.

He turned on his side and moved away from the tree toward the island. He was a poor swimmer, and he was swimming against the current. But Quintus had taught him how to float; he remembered how indulgently he had resisted the lessons and considered how stupid his resistance had been. All that a man saw and learned and heard was valuable, no matter how much he had deprecated it, had undervalued its importance. Marcus, when he was exhausted, floated, and regarded the passionate blaze of the stars. Never had he felt so close to God. No longer did he feel insignificant, hidden in his insignificance from the eye of the Eternal. God had desired his continued existence; therefore, there was a reason.

He swam doggedly, in increasing darkness. He was only a man, of no importance. He had been set upon, however, by men who had deemed him dangerous for some mysterious reasons. Had they mistaken him for someone else? No. One of them had mentioned his name, mockingly. It was a great mystery.

He was enormously tired. The current resembled a limitless wall which he must climb. What had Noë said of God, in his letter? “God, the Father.” “Father,” prayed Marcus, “help me, as you saved me.” For an instant he remembered that even the sons of the gods did not dare address their progenitors as “father.” It was blasphemy. Yet Marcus prayed, “Father, uphold me with Your Hand. Bear me upon it.”

The stars dazzled him; the moon-edge bewildered him. All seemed to swing in circles. Silver light raced fleetingly on the river. Forms, created from the mist, strode the water, light in the folds of their garments, light on their heads. They moved on the river, bent on mystic missions, unaware of the man weakly striving. There was a swiftness to their movements, as if they were bearing momentous tidings, and preparing a way.

He could not believe it, but he was upheld by something more than water. A rock. A heavier darkness was before him. No, he could not believe it, but he must accept it. He was near the shore of the island.

Warm salt tears ran over his wet face. He walked the shallow waters and reached the beautiful dry land. He fell upon it, kissing the earth, rubbing his outstretched hands on the warm soil, smelling the fragrance of bruised grass and herbs. It surely was too early for jasmine, but he had the illusion that he could inhale it, sweet and comforting and pervading. Joy overpowered him, like a shattering wave. He could not have enough of embracing the blessed earth.