Mark Twain's Medieval Romance (12 page)

It wasn’t long before my skin started itching and my eyes watering. From my sandals to my headband, I was feverish. I felt so ill I hardly noticed that a chariot was overtaking us. Jason swung the horses across the path of the donkeys.

“Get down!” he shouted, “Get down, you little fool!”

He was out of the chariot, reaching strong hands up to me.

“You poor little thing, I know what they did to you at the baths—”

“Don’t touch me!” One of his arms was beneath my knees, the other around my shoulders. He carried me toward a thicket at the side of the road. The bewildered peasant woman made no effort to stop him. Beneath the shadows of gnarled olive trees the air was close and heavy with the fragrance of blossoming almonds. I could hardly breathe.

“Take off your clothes.” He put me down beside a little stream. “You must bathe in fresh water.”

“No—!” I backed away from him.

“You little idiot, don’t you see their treacherous scheme? If you don’t bathe in fresh water after the sulphur plunge, your skin will become blotched and hideous.” He gripped my shoulders and shook me roughly. “I’ll not have your beauty marred—you are the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen! Do as I tell you or I’ll strip you and throw you in!”

As though reading my thoughts, he suddenly relaxed. His smile was gentle, and his voice tender.

“Don’t be afraid. I’ll go back down the path and wait.”

He kissed my forehead and turned back into the bushes beneath the dark trees.

The brook was cool and refreshing. I lay back on the soft sand and let the waters rush over me. The ripples moved caressingly. All the discomfort and the fever was washed away. A sweet and dreamy lassitude overcame me. I wondered if he was watching from the depths of the thicket. But I didn’t think so.

And then I wondered why he didn’t come. Perhaps he only protected me as a child is protected. Was this another of his pitying favors? If a man really loved a woman, he could not stay away from her.

There was a stir in the undergrowth. Enid and the simpering Greek, Philo, stood looking at me.

“Oh, excuse us!” tittered Enid. “We saw Jason’s chariot, so we sneaked in to see what he was up to. Of course, we didn’t dream—!”

She turned as she saw Jason coming toward her.

“Thorry to dithturb your little idyl,” lisped Philo.

Jason threw a stone and the intruders ran laughing into the thicket. We both knew they’d make a malicious scandal of what they had seen as soon as they got back to Tiberias.

While Jason turned his back, I put my clothes on and we drove home in worried silence.

That night I didn’t go to the dining hall for supper. And no one came to persuade me. As soon as it was dark, I took a dark cloak and what money I had left and slipped out through a side gate. Staying close to the walls in the dark streets, I headed for the fishing quarter at the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

The fishermen’s nets, on drying racks, looked like acres of delicate lace in the moonlight. Shadowy figures were removing them. The sky was threatening and we were close to the season of spring rains.

I approached a slight, aristocratic-looking young man who was struggling rather clumsily to fold up some of the nets. He listened sympathetically as I told him that I was the daughter of Caiphas, the High Priest, and that I had to get home to Jerusalem.

“It is a dangerous journey,” he said with a kindly smile. “A desperate journey for a young girl. After the waters of the Galilee enter into the Jordan, the course is swift and tortuous. And the eastern shore is peopled with savage Bedouins—”

“I know! But anything is better than Tiberias! If I stay here I’ll surely die! I’ll pay you anything!”

“It isn’t the pay.” There was a deprecating smile on his fine Jewish features. “It is just that I am not a boatman. My name is Matthew—I used to be a tax gatherer. So you see, I have not been trained to do anything very useful.”

He turned and pointed to a camp fire farther up the beach, where a number of men sat around the flames.

“But some of my friends are fishermen, very good fishermen—Peter and Andrew and James. Our Master teaches us that we must love our neighbors as ourselves—so I am sure that they will help you.”

“Oh, if they only would!”

He hurried away toward the camp fire. Something about the man had given me reassurance and a certain feeling of hope.

And then from among the shadows and the foamy nets, I saw Jason’s tall figure before me. I turned toward the boats drawn up on the sand. I didn’t want to talk to him.

“Don’t go, Miriam!”

“I have to—you shouldn’t have followed me—”

“If you go, I must go with you. I will be your boatman.” He took my hand. “Whither thou goest, I shall go—thy people shall be my people, and thy god, my god.”

“Please, don’t mock me! Leave me alone!”

“I can never do that, dearest! God knows I have tried not to love you. I was a slave to ambition as you said—but now, I have forgotten everything—but you.”

“If I could only believe you!”

The silvery moonlight, through the thick, scudding clouds, cast an uneven causeway across the waters. The far shores of Galilee, the savage shores, were wrapped in beckoning mystery.

“Come!” Jason lifted me into a boat and pushed it into the water. With a hasty movement he picked up the sweep and poled us out of the shallows.

I lay back against the rough wood and looked up toward the dappled heavens. Why did I always surrender? I seemed to have no will when Jason was near me. Still, if he was telling the truth, if he really loved me—

“Was Salome angry?” I asked.

“Furious! She made a terrible scene!”

“Are you sure that you want to leave her? That you don’t love her?”

“Love! That woman doesn’t know what it is to love! For months she just kept me dangling—simply playing with me.”

“It is hard to believe that any woman could do that to you, Jason. You seem so sure of yourself.”

“She is a princess,” he said bitterly. “And the stakes were high. I learned to gamble when I was a charioteer. Herod is a worthless puppet. Everyone in Rome despises him and Salome is of royal blood. Her husband would be in a position to guarantee the Eastern empire. He might become emperor himself when Tiberius dies—”

“You dreamed of that!”

“Why not! I have a fortune and so has Salome. The throne will be sold by the Praetorian Guard—the palace troops control the empire. But all that is forgotten. Let’s not talk about it any more.”

I didn’t want to talk. I was too happy. Jason raised the sail and little gusts of wind propelled us southward. He came forward and lay beside me. We looked up at the changing sky.

Then, without warning, the squall broke upon us. The sail was split with a roar like a bull. Shredded canvas whipped in the wind as the boat was lashed by the fury of the spring rains.

Jason scrambled to the sweep, struggling awkwardly to keep us from the trough of the waves. I was drenched as I fought to take in the whipping fragments of the tattered sail. Then the whole keel shivered as the craggy nose of a concealed rock forced its way through the splintering wood. The waves closed over us and I felt Jason’s arm around me. I sank into a swirl of thunder and darkness.

How long it lasted I will never know exactly. After a time my mind struggled toward consciousness—only to slip back to oblivion again. In these rare, half-lucid moments it seemed that I was again in my room in Herod’s palace. Once I seemed to see Jason’s face bending over me and feel his hand behind my head. A cup was pressed to my lips and I heard him say, “Drink, Miriam, dearest, you must get strong and well for my sake.”

Finally the fever left me and I returned to the consciousness of a bright, sunshiny day. It hadn’t been a hallucination. Outside the windows of my room in the palace the trees were in full blossom. But my chamber had the untidiness of a sick room. I crawled from beneath the covers and looked at myself in the steel mirror. It was a thin, drawn face that looked back at me. I rang for the serving maid, but she did not come.

Finally, trembling and pausing to rest at frequent intervals, I managed to wash myself and dress in clean clothes. Then, supporting myself with a hand against the wall, I faltered out into the corridors. There was a littered, deserted look to the halls. The serving women, in untidy dress, gossiped in slatternly clusters. When I talked to them their looks were bold and insolent and their words just barely courteous. They told me that Herod and the entire court had returned to Jerusalem to celebrate the holidays.

I returned to my room to find one of the lesser servants—a girl about as old as I am—putting my gold hairpins in her hair. When she saw me, she made a guilty movement and knocked over the alabaster lamp—the one that Jason had given me. It smashed upon the floor.

I was so angry I snatched a girdle from the wardrobe and began to whip her with it. She dropped to her knees and whined for mercy.

“Stop sniveling!” I said. “And tell me what has happened. Take me to Jason!”

“He has gone—on the day after the Princess and the women’s caravan left for Jerusalem. Enid came back here with a message for Jason.”

“And?”

“It seemed to disturb him. He had not left your side since the night of the great storm. He put on his traveling cloak. Then he threw it aside. He walked in the gardens, hour after hour. He called for his chariot, then he returned it to the stables. It was not the first message the Princess had sent to him, but he had rejected all the others with curses. Now after many black looks he called for the chariot again and drove away toward Jerusalem.”

“And the message?”

The servant whimpered that she did not know any more. So I ordered her to leave me.

Dear God! Was I never to be sure of him? Had Salome capitulated? Had her message said that she would marry him? And had this last surrender been too great a temptation?

I had to know. I got my faded cloak from the wardrobe. My silver still was secure in the secret pocket of the lining. Hurrying to the beach, I asked for the former tax gatherer, Matthew.

“He isn’t here,” a surly old fisherman told me. “He and his crowd have gone to Jerusalem for the Passover. Bad luck to them!”

“Why do you say that? Matthew seemed kind.”

“Oh, yes,” the fisherman grumbled. “Very kind. I took my son, Reuben, to Capernaum to be cured of blindness. But on the night we went there, this Matthew and his Master came to Tiberias. That was the miracle—the evil miracle! We missed each other—for no reason at all!”

“This may have been meant to test you!” I was saying anything in an effort to influence him. “You should follow these Galileans. Take your son to Jerusalem! By boat you can be there for the holidays!”

“By boat?” Such a journey had not occurred to him. I kept on talking and offered him silver. He took the money, but it was his love for his boy that decided him.

My thoughts raced ahead as we left the clear waters of Galilee and rushed through overhanging jungles, made lush and foul by the recent floods of the Jordan.

Despite the skill of the fisherman, the boat sometimes stuck on a sand bar. When this happened, he and I would go over the side. The sand eddied around our feet as we pushed the boat back into deeper current. At last the boat whirled into the shallows and I saw the crested helmets of the Romans at the post house. With the last of my silver I bribed an officer to take me up to Jerusalem on the crupper of his horse. We entered the city by the Double Gate. The streets were filled with people shouting hosannahs and waving palm branches. Through the crowd I caught a glimpse of Matthew in a little group of men. They were gathered around a Man wearing a colored robe, who was seated upon a donkey. And for an instant I thought I saw you, Father, standing on the outer stairs of the Temple, smiling approval toward these men.

But this was just a confused impression. Before I could identify you, the cavalryman turned his horse into one of the side streets leading to Herod’s palace.

Galba was the officer in charge at the Portal of the Stairs.

“Where is Jason?” I demanded. “Take me to him at once!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, ladybird. You see, Jason has been arrested—the King caught him in Salome’s boudoir.”

My heart was leaden with conflicting sorrows. It was quite clear that Jason had betrayed me. He had left me to go to Salome. But hope dies so hard! I still didn’t want him to suffer. There must be some explanation for his contradictory behavior.

Late at night I awakened when I heard someone fumbling at the lock on my door. Salome came in. She was flushed and agitated as she blurted: “That swine! That insufferable swine! My stepfather has condemned Jason to the arena! But you, you can save him—”

I mistrusted her and anything she might tell me. It would be best to question her carefully. I asked: “For what has he been condemned?”

“Herod has charged him with violating the sanctity of the women’s quarters—with having gone to your room at night in the palace at Tiberias!”

“You know that is a lie!” I cried.

She made no answer. Her shadow fluttered against the walls like a great moth as she strode up and down past the brazier.

“You have brought him to this!” I burst out angrily. “It is all your doing! He didn’t leave Tiberias with the court—he stayed with me—until you lured him away with that wretched note you sent by Enid! What did you say in it?”

“I had no pride—only envy,” she said finally. “After I’d seen him in your sick room in Tiberias, nursing you, I knew I had to have him even though he didn’t love me. So I sent Enid back to tell him that I’d marry him and run away with him to Alexandria.”

I spoke harshly to keep back the tears. “Well, you succeeded! Your bargain must have appealed to him—he abandoned me and went to you!”

“He came to me,” her face was averted, “to refuse my offer of marriage.” She gave me a quick look from the corner of her eyes. “And to tell me he’d never love anyone but you. That’s why he was with me when Herod caught us.”

“Then why didn’t you intercede for Jason? Why didn’t you tell Herod the truth?”

“I did.” Her laugh was mirthless. “I begged too hard—I told Herod that I loved Jason and for that I must be humiliated by being forced to sit in the arena and see Jason choose between the tiger and the lady
when he knows that you will be the lady behind one door
!”