_ You, my reader, will remember, far back at the beginning of this
narrative, how, when a little lad on the Minnesota farm, I looked at
the photographs of the Holy Land and recognized places and pointed
out changes in places. Also you will remember, as I described the
scene I had witnessed of the healing of the lepers, I told the
missionary that I was a big man with a big sword, astride a horse
and looking on.
That childhood incident was merely a trailing cloud of glory, as
Wordsworth puts it. Not in entire forgetfulness had I, little
Darrell Standing, come into the world. But those memories of other
times and places that glimmered up to the surface of my child
consciousness soon failed and faded. In truth, as is the way with
all children, the shades of the prison-house closed about me, and I
remembered my mighty past no more. Every man born of woman has a
past mighty as mine. Very few men born of women have been fortunate
enough to suffer years of solitary and strait-jacketing. That was
my good fortune. I was enabled to remember once again, and to
remember, among other things, the time when I sat astride a horse
and beheld the lepers healed.
My name was Ragnar Lodbrog. I was in truth a large man. I stood
half a head above the Romans of my legion. But that was later,
after the time of my journey from Alexandria to Jerusalem, that I
came to command a legion. It was a crowded life, that. Books and
books, and years of writing could not record it all. So I shall
briefen and no more than hint at the beginnings of it.
Now all is clear and sharp save the very beginning. I never knew my
mother. I was told that I was tempest-born, on a beaked ship in the
Northern Sea, of a captured woman, after a sea fight and a sack of a
coastal stronghold. I never heard the name of my mother. She died
at the height of the tempest. She was of the North Danes, so old
Lingaard told me. He told me much that I was too young to remember,
yet little could he tell. A sea fight and a sack, battle and
plunder and torch, a flight seaward in the long ships to escape
destruction upon the rocks, and a killing strain and struggle
against the frosty, foundering seas--who, then, should know aught or
mark a stranger woman in her hour with her feet fast set on the way
of death? Many died. Men marked the living women, not the dead.
Sharp-bitten into my child imagination are the incidents immediately
after my birth, as told me by old Lingaard. Lingaard, too old to
labour at the sweeps, had been surgeon, undertaker, and midwife of
the huddled captives in the open midships. So I was delivered in
storm, with the spume of the cresting seas salt upon me.
Not many hours old was I when Tostig Lodbrog first laid eyes on me.
His was the lean ship, and his the seven other lean ships that had
made the foray, fled the rapine, and won through the storm. Tostig
Lodbrog was also called Muspell, meaning "The Burning"; for he was
ever aflame with wrath. Brave he was, and cruel he was, with no
heart of mercy in that great chest of his. Ere the sweat of battle
had dried on him, leaning on his axe, he ate the heart of Ngrun
after the fight at Hasfarth. Because of mad anger he sold his son,
Garulf, into slavery to the Juts. I remember, under the smoky
rafters of Brunanbuhr, how he used to call for the skull of Guthlaf
for a drinking beaker. Spiced wine he would have from no other cup
than the skull of Guthlaf.
And to him, on the reeling deck after the storm was past, old
Lingaard brought me. I was only hours old, wrapped naked in a salt-
crusted wolfskin. Now it happens, being prematurely born, that I
was very small.
"Ho! ho!--a dwarf!" cried Tostig, lowering a pot of mead half-
drained from his lips to stare at me.
The day was bitter, but they say he swept me naked from the
wolfskin, and by my foot, between thumb and forefinger, dangled me
to the bite of the wind.
"A roach!" he ho-ho'd. "A shrimp! A sea-louse!" And he made to
squash me between huge forefinger and thumb, either of which,
Lingaard avers, was thicker than my leg or thigh.
But another whim was upon him.
"The youngling is a-thirst. Let him drink."
And therewith, head-downward, into the half-pot of mead he thrust
me. And might well have drowned in this drink of men--I who had
never known a mother's breast in the briefness of time I had lived--
had it not been for Lingaard. But when he plucked me forth from the
brew, Tostig Lodbrog struck him down in a rage. We rolled on the
deck, and the great bear hounds, captured in the fight with the
North Danes just past, sprang upon us.
"Ho! ho!" roared Tostig Lodbrog, as the old man and I and the
wolfskin were mauled and worried by the dogs.
But Lingaard gained his feet, saving me but losing the wolfskin to
the hounds.
Tostig Lodbrog finished the mead and regarded me, while Lingaard
knew better than to beg for mercy where was no mercy.
"Hop o' my thumb," quoth Tostig. "By Odin, the women of the North
Danes are a scurvy breed. They birth dwarfs, not men. Of what use
is this thing? He will never make a man. Listen you, Lingaard,
grow him to be a drink-boy at Brunanbuhr. And have an eye on the
dogs lest they slobber him down by mistake as a meat-crumb from the
table."
I knew no woman. Old Lingaard was midwife and nurse, and for
nursery were reeling decks and the stamp and trample of men in
battle or storm. How I survived puling infancy, God knows. I must
have been born iron in a day of iron, for survive I did, to give the
lie to Tostig's promise of dwarf-hood. I outgrew all beakers and
tankards, and not for long could he half-drown me in his mead pot.
This last was a favourite feat of his. It was his raw humour, a
sally esteemed by him delicious wit.
My first memories are of Tostig Lodbrog's beaked ships and fighting
men, and of the feast hall at Brunanbuhr when our boats lay beached
beside the frozen fjord. For I was made drink-boy, and amongst my
earliest recollections are toddling with the wine-filled skull of
Guthlaf to the head of the table where Tostig bellowed to the
rafters. They were madmen, all of madness, but it seemed the common
way of life to me who knew naught else. They were men of quick
rages and quick battling. Their thoughts were ferocious; so was
their eating ferocious, and their drinking. And I grew like them.
How else could I grow, when I served the drink to the bellowings of
drunkards and to the skalds singing of Hialli, and the bold Hogni,
and of the Niflung's gold, and of Gudrun's revenge on Atli when she
gave him the hearts of his children and hers to eat while battle
swept the benches, tore down the hangings raped from southern
coasts, and, littered the feasting board with swift corpses.
Oh, I, too, had a rage, well tutored in such school. I was but
eight when I showed my teeth at a drinking between the men of
Brunanbuhr and the Juts who came as friends with the jarl Agard in
his three long ships. I stood at Tostig Lodbrog's shoulder, holding
the skull of Guthlaf that steamed and stank with the hot, spiced
wine. And I waited while Tostig should complete his ravings against
the North Dane men. But still he raved and still I waited, till he
caught breath of fury to assail the North Dane woman. Whereat I
remembered my North Dane mother, and saw my rage red in my eyes, and
smote him with the skull of Guthlaf, so that he was wine-drenched,
and wine-blinded, and fire-burnt. And as he reeled unseeing,
smashing his great groping clutches through the air at me, I was in
and short-dirked him thrice in belly, thigh and buttock, than which
I could reach no higher up the mighty frame of him.
And the jarl Agard's steel was out, and his Juts joining him as he
shouted:
"A bear cub! A bear cub! By Odin, let the cub fight!"
And there, under that roaring roof of Brunanbuhr, the babbling
drink-boy of the North Danes fought with mighty Lodbrog. And when,
with one stroke, I was flung, dazed and breathless, half the length
of that great board, my flying body mowing down pots and tankards,
Lodbrog cried out command:
"Out with him! Fling him to the hounds!"
But the jarl would have it no, and clapped Lodbrog on the shoulder,
and asked me as a gift of friendship.
And south I went, when the ice passed out of the fjord, in Jarl
Agard's ships. I was made drink-boy and sword-bearer to him, and in
lieu of other name was called Ragnar Lodbrog. Agard's country was
neighbour to the Frisians, and a sad, flat country of fog and fen it
was. I was with him for three years, to his death, always at his
back, whether hunting swamp wolves or drinking in the great hall
where Elgiva, his young wife, often sat among her women. I was with
Agard in south foray with his ships along what would be now the
coast of France, and there I learned that still south were warmer
seasons and softer climes and women.
But we brought back Agard wounded to death and slow-dying. And we
burned his body on a great pyre, with Elgiva, in her golden
corselet, beside him singing. And there were household slaves in
golden collars that burned of a plenty there with her, and nine
female thralls, and eight male slaves of the Angles that were of
gentle birth and battle-captured. And there were live hawks so
burned, and the two hawk-boys with their birds.
But I, the drink-boy, Ragnar Lodbrog, did not burn. I was eleven,
and unafraid, and had never worn woven cloth on my body. And as the
flames sprang up, and Elgiva sang her death-song, and the thralls
and slaves screeched their unwillingness to die, I tore away my
fastenings, leaped, and gained the fens, the gold collar of my
slavehood still on my neck, footing it with the hounds loosed to
tear me down.
In the fens were wild men, masterless men, fled slaves, and outlaws,
who were hunted in sport as the wolves were hunted.
For three years I knew never roof nor fire, and I grew hard as the
frost, and would have stolen a woman from the Juts but that the
Frisians by mischance, in a two days' hunt, ran me down. By them I
was looted of my gold collar and traded for two wolf-hounds to Edwy,
of the Saxons, who put an iron collar on me, and later made of me
and five other slaves a present to Athel of the East Angles. I was
thrall and fighting man, until, lost in an unlucky raid far to the
east beyond our marches, I was sold among the Huns, and was a
swineherd until I escaped south into the great forests and was taken
in as a freeman by the Teutons, who were many, but who lived in
small tribes and drifted southward before the Hun advance.
And up from the south into the great forests came the Romans,
fighting men all, who pressed us back upon the Huns. It was a
crushage of the peoples for lack of room; and we taught the Romans
what fighting was, although in truth we were no less well taught by
them.
But always I remembered the sun of the south-land that I had
glimpsed in the ships of Agard, and it was my fate, caught in this
south drift of the Teutons, to be captured by the Romans and be
brought back to the sea which I had not seen since I was lost away
from the East Angles. I was made a sweep-slave in the galleys, and
it was as a sweep-slave that at last I came to Rome.
All the story is too long of how I became a free-man, a citizen, and
a soldier, and of how, when I was thirty, I journeyed to Alexandria,
and from Alexandria to Jerusalem. Yet what I have told from the
time when I was baptized in the mead-pot of Tostig Lodbrog I have
been compelled to tell in order that you may understand what manner
of man rode in through the Jaffa Gate and drew all eyes upon him.
Well might they look. They were small breeds, lighter-boned and
lighter-thewed, these Romans and Jews, and a blonde like me they had
never gazed upon. All along the narrow streets they gave before me
but stood to stare wide-eyed at this yellow man from the north, or
from God knew where so far as they knew aught of the matter.
Practically all Pilate's troops were auxiliaries, save for a handful
of Romans about the palace and the twenty Romans who rode with me.
Often enough have I found the auxiliaries good soldiers, but never
so steadily dependable as the Romans. In truth they were better
fighting men the year round than were we men of the North, who
fought in great moods and sulked in great moods. The Roman was
invariably steady and dependable.
There was a woman from the court of Antipas, who was a friend of
Pilate's wife and whom I met at Pilate's the night of my arrival. I
shall call her Miriam, for Miriam was the name I loved her by. If
it were merely difficult to describe the charm of women, I would
describe Miriam. But how describe emotion in words? The charm of
woman is wordless. It is different from perception that culminates
in reason, for it arises in sensation and culminates in emotion,
which, be it admitted, is nothing else than super-sensation.
In general, any woman has fundamental charm for any man. When this
charm becomes particular, then we call it love. Miriam had this
particular charm for me. Verily I was co-partner in her charm.
Half of it was my own man's life in me that leapt and met her wide-
armed and made in me all that she was desirable plus all my desire
of her.
Miriam was a grand woman. I use the term advisedly. She was fine-
bodied, commanding, over and above the average Jewish woman in
stature and in line. She was an aristocrat in social caste; she was
an aristocrat by nature. All her ways were large ways, generous
ways. She had brain, she had wit, and, above all, she had
womanliness. As you shall see, it was her womanliness that betrayed
her and me in they end. Brunette, olive-skinned, oval-faced, her
hair was blue-black with its blackness and her eyes were twin wells
of black. Never were more pronounced types of blonde and brunette
in man and woman met than in us.
And we met on the instant. There was no self-discussion, no
waiting, wavering, to make certain. She was mine the moment I
looked upon her. And by the same token she knew that I belonged to
her above all men. I strode to her. She half-lifted from her couch
as if drawn upward to me. And then we looked with all our eyes,
blue eyes and black, until Pilate's wife, a thin, tense, overwrought
woman, laughed nervously. And while I bowed to the wife and gave
greeting, I thought I saw Pilate give Miriam a significant glance,
as if to say, "Is he not all I promised?" For he had had word of my
coming from Sulpicius Quirinius, the legate of Syria. As well had
Pilate and I been known to each other before ever he journeyed out
to be procurator over the Semitic volcano of Jerusalem.
Much talk we had that night, especially Pilate, who spoke in detail
of the local situation, and who seemed lonely and desirous to share
his anxieties with some one and even to bid for counsel. Pilate was
of the solid type of Roman, with sufficient imagination
intelligently to enforce the iron policy of Rome, and not unduly
excitable under stress.
But on this night it was plain that he was worried. The Jews had
got on his nerves. They were too volcanic, spasmodic, eruptive.
And further, they were subtle. The Romans had a straight,
forthright way of going about anything. The Jews never approached
anything directly, save backwards, when they were driven by
compulsion. Left to themselves, they always approached by
indirection. Pilate's irritation was due, as he explained, to the
fact that the Jews were ever intriguing to make him, and through him
Rome, the catspaw in the matter of their religious dissensions. As
was well known to me, Rome did not interfere with the religious
notions of its conquered peoples; but the Jews were for ever
confusing the issues and giving a political cast to purely
unpolitical events.
Pilate waxed eloquent over the diverse sects and the fanatic
uprisings and riotings that were continually occurring
"Lodbrog," he said, "one can never tell what little summer cloud of
their hatching may turn into a thunder-storm roaring and rattling
about one's ears. I am here to keep order and quiet. Despite me
they make the place a hornets' nest. Far rather would I govern
Scythians or savage Britons than these people who are never at peace
about God. Right now there is a man up to the north, a fisherman
turned preacher, and miracle-worker, who as well as not may soon
have all the country by the ears and my recall on its way from
Rome."
This was the first I had heard of the man called Jesus, and I little
remarked it at the time. Not until afterward did I remember him,
when the little summer cloud had become a full-fledged thunderstorm.
"I have had report of him," Pilate went on. "He is not political.
There is no doubt of that. But trust Caiaphas, and Hanan behind
Caiaphas, to make of this fisherman a political thorn with which to
prick Rome and ruin me."
"This Caiaphas, I have heard of him as high priest, then who is this
Hanan?" I asked.
"The real high priest, a cunning fox," Pilate explained. "Caiaphas
was appointed by Gratus, but Caiaphas is the shadow and the
mouthpiece of Hanan."
"They have never forgiven you that little matter of the votive
shields," Miriam teased.
Whereupon, as a man will when his sore place is touched, Pilate
launched upon the episode, which had been an episode, no more, at
the beginning, but which had nearly destroyed him. In all innocence
before his palace he had affixed two shields with votive
inscriptions. Ere the consequent storm that burst on his head had
passed the Jews had written their complaints to Tiberius, who
approved them and reprimanded Pilate. I was glad, a little later,
when I could have talk with Miriam. Pilate's wife had found
opportunity to tell me about her. She was of old royal stock. Her
sister was wife of Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanaea. Now
this Philip was brother to Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea,
and both were sons of Herod, called by the Jews the "Great."
Miriam, as I understood, was at home in the courts of both
tetrarchs, being herself of the blood. Also, when a girl, she had
been betrothed to Archelaus at the time he was ethnarch of
Jerusalem. She had a goodly fortune in her own right, so that
marriage had not been compulsory. To boot, she had a will of her
own, and was doubtless hard to please in so important a matter as
husbands.
It must have been in the very air we breathed, for in no time Miriam
and I were at it on the subject of religion. Truly, the Jews of
that day battened on religion as did we on fighting and feasting.
For all my stay in that country there was never a moment when my
wits were not buzzing with the endless discussions of life and
death, law, and God. Now Pilate believed neither in gods, nor
devils, nor anything. Death, to him, was the blackness of unbroken
sleep; and yet, during his years in Jerusalem, he was ever vexed
with the inescapable fuss and fury of things religious. Why, I had
a horse-boy on my trip into Idumaea, a wretched creature that could
never learn to saddle and who yet could talk, and most learnedly,
without breath, from nightfall to sunrise, on the hair-splitting
differences in the teachings of all the rabbis from Shemaiah to
Gamaliel.
But to return to Miriam.
"You believe you are immortal," she was soon challenging me. "Then
why do you fear to talk about it?"
"Why burden my mind with thoughts about certainties?" I countered.
"But are you certain?" she insisted. "Tell me about it. What is it
like--your immortality?"
And when I had told her of Niflheim and Muspell, of the birth of the
giant Ymir from the snowflakes, of the cow Andhumbla, and of Fenrir
and Loki and the frozen Jotuns--as I say, when I had told her of all
this, and of Thor and Odin and our own Valhalla, she clapped her
hands and cried out, with sparkling eyes:
"Oh, you barbarian! You great child! You yellow giant-thing of the
frost! You believer of old nurse tales and stomach satisfactions!
But the spirit of you, that which cannot die, where will it go when
your body is dead?"
"As I have said, Valhalla," I answered. "And my body shall be
there, too."
"Eating?--drinking?--fighting?"
"And loving," I added. "We must have our women in heaven, else what
is heaven for?"
"I do not like your heaven," she said. "It is a mad place, a beast
place, a place of frost and storm and fury."
"And your heaven?" I questioned.
"Is always unending summer, with the year at the ripe for the fruits
and flowers and growing things."
I shook my head and growled:
"I do not like your heaven. It is a sad place, a soft place, a
place for weaklings and eunuchs and fat, sobbing shadows of men."
My remarks must have glamoured her mind, for her eyes continued to
sparkle, and mine was half a guess that she was leading me on.
"My heaven," she said, "is the abode of the blest."
"Valhalla is the abode of the blest," I asserted. "For look you,
who cares for flowers where flowers always are? in my country, after
the iron winter breaks and the sun drives away the long night, the
first blossoms twinkling on the melting ice-edge are things of joy,
and we look, and look again.
"And fire!" I cried out. "Great glorious fire! A fine heaven yours
where a man cannot properly esteem a roaring fire under a tight roof
with wind and snow a-drive outside."
"A simple folk, you," she was back at me. "You build a roof and a
fire in a snowbank and call it heaven. In my heaven we do not have
to escape the wind and snow."
"No," I objected. "We build roof and fire to go forth from into the
frost and storm and to return to from the frost and storm. Man's
life is fashioned for battle with frost and storm. His very fire
and roof he makes by his battling. I know. For three years, once,
I knew never roof nor fire. I was sixteen, and a man, ere ever I
wore woven cloth on my body. I was birthed in storm, after battle,
and my swaddling cloth was a wolfskin. Look at me and see what
manner of man lives in Valhalla."
And look she did, all a-glamour, and cried out:
"You great, yellow giant-thing of a man!" Then she added pensively,
"Almost it saddens me that there may not be such men in my heaven."
"It is a good world," I consoled her. "Good is the plan and wide.
There is room for many heavens. It would seem that to each is given
the heaven that is his heart's desire. A good country, truly, there
beyond the grave. I doubt not I shall leave our feast halls and
raid your coasts of sun and flowers, and steal you away. My mother
was so stolen."
And in the pause I looked at her, and she looked at me, and dared to
look. And my blood ran fire. By Odin, this was a woman!
What might have happened I know not, for Pilate, who had ceased from
his talk with Ambivius and for some time had sat grinning, broke the
pause.
"A rabbi, a Teutoberg rabbi!" he gibed. "A new preacher and a new
doctrine come to Jerusalem. Now will there be more dissensions, and
riotings, and stonings of prophets. The gods save us, it is a mad-
house. Lodbrog, I little thought it of you. Yet here you are,
spouting and fuming as wildly as any madman from the desert about
what shall happen to you when you are dead. One life at a time,
Lodbrog. It saves trouble. It saves trouble."
"Go on, Miriam, go on," his wife cried.
She had sat entranced during the discussion, with hands tightly
clasped, and the thought flickered up in my mind that she had
already been corrupted by the religious folly of Jerusalem. At any
rate, as I was to learn in the days that followed, she was unduly
bent upon such matters. She was a thin woman, as if wasted by
fever. Her skin was tight-stretched. Almost it seemed I could look
through her hands did she hold them between me and the light. She
was a good woman, but highly nervous, and, at times, fancy-flighted
about shades and signs and omens. Nor was she above seeing visions
and hearing voices. As for me, I had no patience with such
weaknesses. Yet was she a good woman with no heart of evil.
I was on a mission for Tiberius, and it was my ill luck to see
little of Miriam. On my return from the court of Antipas she had
gone into Batanaea to Philip's court, where was her sister. Once
again I was back in Jerusalem, and, though it was no necessity of my
business to see Philip, who, though weak, was faithful to Roman
will, I journeyed into Batanaea in the hope of meeting with Miriam.
Then there was my trip into Idumaea. Also, I travelled into Syria
in obedience to the command of Sulpicius Quirinius, who, as imperial
legate, was curious of my first-hand report of affairs in Jerusalem.
Thus, travelling wide and much, I had opportunity to observe the
strangeness of the Jews who were so madly interested in God. It was
their peculiarity. Not content with leaving such matters to their
priests, they were themselves for ever turning priests and preaching
wherever they could find a listener. And listeners they found a-
plenty.
They gave up their occupations to wander about the country like
beggars, disputing and bickering with the rabbis and Talmudists in
the synagogues and temple porches. It was in Galilee, a district of
little repute, the inhabitants of which were looked upon as witless,
that I crossed the track of the man Jesus. It seems that he had
been a carpenter, and after that a fisherman, and that his fellow-
fishermen had ceased dragging their nets and followed him in his
wandering life. Some few looked upon him as a prophet, but the most
contended that he was a madman. My wretched horse-boy, himself
claiming Talmudic knowledge second to none, sneered at Jesus,
calling him the king of the beggars, calling his doctrine Ebionism,
which, as he explained to me, was to the effect that only the poor
should win to heaven, while the rich and powerful were to burn for
ever in some lake of fire.
It was my observation that it was the custom of the country for
every man to call every other man a madman. In truth, in my
judgment, they were all mad. There was a plague of them. They cast
out devils by magic charms, cured diseases by the laying on of
hands, drank deadly poisons unharmed, and unharmed played with
deadly snakes--or so they claimed. They ran away to starve in the
deserts. They emerged howling new doctrine, gathering crowds about
them, forming new sects that split on doctrine and formed more
sects.
"By Odin," I told Pilate, "a trifle of our northern frost and snow
would cool their wits. This climate is too soft. In place of
building roofs and hunting meat, they are ever building doctrine."
"And altering the nature of God," Pilate corroborated sourly. "A
curse on doctrine."
"So say I," I agreed. "If ever I get away with unaddled wits from
this mad land, I'll cleave through whatever man dares mention to me
what may happen after I am dead."
Never were such trouble makers. Everything under the sun was pious
or impious to them. They, who were so clever in hair-splitting
argument, seemed incapable of grasping the Roman idea of the State.
Everything political was religious; everything religious was
political. Thus every procurator's hands were full. The Roman
eagles, the Roman statues, even the votive shields of Pilate, were
deliberate insults to their religion.
The Roman taking of the census was an abomination. Yet it had to be
done, for it was the basis of taxation. But there it was again.
Taxation by the State was a crime against their law and God. Oh,
that Law! It was not the Roman law. It was their law, what they
called God's law. There were the zealots, who murdered anybody who
broke this law. And for a procurator to punish a zealot caught red-
handed was to raise a riot or an insurrection.
Everything, with these strange people, was done in the name of God.
There were what we Romans called the THAUMATURGI. They worked
miracles to prove doctrine. Ever has it seemed to me a witless
thing to prove the multiplication table by turning a staff into a
serpent, or even into two serpents. Yet these things the
thaumaturgi did, and always to the excitement of the common people.
Heavens, what sects and sects! Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees--a
legion of them! No sooner did they start with a new quirk when it
turned political. Coponius, procurator fourth before Pilate, had a
pretty time crushing the Gaulonite sedition which arose in this
fashion and spread down from Gamala.
In Jerusalem, that last time I rode in, it was easy to note the
increasing excitement of the Jews. They ran about in crowds,
chattering and spouting. Some were proclaiming the end of the
world. Others satisfied themselves with the imminent destruction of
the Temple. And there were rank revolutionises who announced that
Roman rule was over and the new Jewish kingdom about to begin.
Pilate, too, I noted, showed heavy anxiety. That they were giving
him a hard time of it was patent. But I will say, as you shall see,
that he matched their subtlety with equal subtlety; and from what I
saw of him I have little doubt but what he would have confounded
many a disputant in the synagogues.
"But half a legion of Romans," he regretted to me, "and I would take
Jerusalem by the throat . . . and then be recalled for my pains, I
suppose."
Like me, he had not too much faith in the auxiliaries; and of Roman
soldiers we had but a scant handful.
Back again, I lodged in the palace, and to my great joy found Miriam
there. But little satisfaction was mine, for the talk ran long on
the situation. There was reason for this, for the city buzzed like
the angry hornets' nest it was. The fast called the Passover--a
religious affair, of course--was near, and thousands were pouring in
from the country, according to custom, to celebrate the feast in
Jerusalem. These newcomers, naturally, were all excitable folk,
else they would not be bent on such pilgrimage. The city was packed
with them, so that many camped outside the walls. As for me, I
could not distinguish how much of the ferment was due to the
teachings of the wandering fisherman, and how much of it was due to
Jewish hatred for Rome.
"A tithe, no more, and maybe not so much, is due to this Jesus,"
Pilate answered my query. "Look to Caiaphas and Hanan for the main
cause of the excitement. They know what they are about. They are
stirring it up, to what end who can tell, except to cause me
trouble."
"Yes, it is certain that Caiaphas and Hanan are responsible," Miriam
said, "but you, Pontius Pilate, are only a Roman and do not
understand. Were you a Jew, you would realize that there is a
greater seriousness at the bottom of it than mere dissension of the
sectaries or trouble-making for you and Rome. The high priests and
Pharisees, every Jew of place or wealth, Philip, Antipas, myself--we
are all fighting for very life.
"This fisherman may be a madman. If so, there is a cunning in his
madness. He preaches the doctrine of the poor. He threatens our
law, and our law is our life, as you have learned ere this. We are
jealous of our law, as you would be jealous of the air denied your
body by a throttling hand on your throat. It is Caiaphas and Hanan
and all they stand for, or it is the fisherman. They must destroy
him, else he will destroy them."
"Is it not strange, so simple a man, a fisherman?" Pilate's wife
breathed forth. "What manner of man can he be to possess such
power? I would that I could see him. I would that with my own eyes
I could see so remarkable a man."
Pilate's brows corrugated at her words, and it was clear that to the
burden on his nerves was added the overwrought state of his wife's
nerves.
"If you would see him, beat up the dens of the town," Miriam laughed
spitefully. "You will find him wine-bibbing or in the company of
nameless women. Never so strange a prophet came up to Jerusalem."
"And what harm in that?" I demanded, driven against my will to take
the part of the fisherman. "Have I not wine-guzzled a-plenty and
passed strange nights in all the provinces? The man is a man, and
his ways are men's ways, else am I a madman, which I here deny."
Miriam shook her head as she spoke.
"He is not mad. Worse, he is dangerous. All Ebionism is dangerous.
He would destroy all things that are fixed. He is a revolutionist.
He would destroy what little is left to us of the Jewish state and
Temple."
Here Pilate shook his head.
"He is not political. I have had report of him. He is a visionary.
There is no sedition in him. He affirms the Roman tax even."
"Still you do not understand," Miriam persisted. "It is not what he
plans; it is the effect, if his plans are achieved, that makes him a
revolutionist. I doubt that he foresees the effect. Yet is the man
a plague, and, like any plague, should be stamped out."
"From all that I have heard, he is a good-hearted, simple man with
no evil in him," I stated.
And thereat I told of the healing of the ten lepers I had witnessed
in Samaria on my way through Jericho.
Pilate's wife sat entranced at what I told. Came to our ears
distant shoutings and cries of some street crowd, and we knew the
soldiers were keeping the streets cleared.
"And you believe this wonder, Lodbrog?" Pilate demanded. "You
believe that in the flash of an eye the festering sores departed
from the lepers?"
"I saw them healed," I replied. "I followed them to make certain.
There was no leprosy in them."
"But did you see them sore?--before the healing?" Pilate insisted.
I shook my head.
"I was only told so," I admitted. "When I saw them afterward, they
had all the seeming of men who had once been lepers. They were in a
daze. There was one who sat in the sun and ever searched his body
and stared and stared at the smooth flesh as if unable to believe
his eyes. He would not speak, nor look at aught else than his
flesh, when I questioned him. He was in a maze. He sat there in
the sun and stared and stated."
Pilate smiled contemptuously, and I noted the quiet smile on
Miriam's face was equally contemptuous. And Pilate's wife sat as if
a corpse, scarce breathing, her eyes wide and unseeing.
Spoke Ambivius: "Caiaphas holds--he told me but yesterday--that the
fisherman claims that he will bring God down on earth and make here
a new kingdom over which God will rule--"
"Which would mean the end of Roman rule," I broke in.
"That is where Caiaphas and Hanan plot to embroil Rome," Miriam
explained. "It is not true. It is a lie they have made."
Pilate nodded and asked:
"Is there not somewhere in your ancient books a prophecy that the
priests here twist into the intent of this fisherman's mind?"
To this she agreed, and gave him the citation. I relate the
incident to evidence the depth of Pilate's study of this people he
strove so hard to keep in order.
"What I have heard," Miriam continued, "is that this Jesus preaches
the end of the world and the beginning of God's kingdom, not here,
but in heaven."
"I have had report of that," Pilate raid. "It is true. This Jesus
holds the justness of the Roman tax. He holds that Rome shall rule
until all rule passes away with the passing of the world. I see
more clearly the trick Hanan is playing me."
"It is even claimed by some of his followers," Ambivius volunteered,
"that he is God Himself."
"I have no report that he has so said," Pilate replied.
"Why not?" his wife breathed. "Why not? Gods have descended to
earth before."
"Look you," Pilate said. "I have it by creditable report, that
after this Jesus had worked some wonder whereby a multitude was fed
on several loaves and fishes, the foolish Galileans were for making
him a king. Against his will they would make him a king. To escape
them he fled into the mountains. No madness there. He was too wise
to accept the fate they would have forced upon him."
"Yet that is the very trick Hanan would force upon you," Miriam
reiterated. "They claim for him that he would be king of the Jews--
an offence against Roman law, wherefore Rome must deal with him."
Pilate shrugged his shoulders.
"A king of the beggars, rather; or a king of the dreamers. He is no
fool. He is visionary, but not visionary of this world's power.
All luck go with him in the next world, for that is beyond Rome's
jurisdiction."
"He holds that property is sin--that is what hits the Pharisees,"
Ambivius spoke up.
Pilate laughed heartily.
"This king of the beggars and his fellow-beggars still do respect
property, he explained. "For, look you, not long ago they had even
a treasurer for their wealth. Judas his name was, and there were
words in that he stole from their common purse which he carried."
"Jesus did not steal?" Pilate's wife asked.
"No," Pilate answered; "it was Judas, the treasurer."
"Who was this John?" I questioned. "He was in trouble up Tiberias
way and Antipas executed him."
"Another one," Miriam answered. "He was born near Hebron. He was
an enthusiast and a desert-dweller. Either he or his followers
claimed that he was Elijah raised from the dead. Elijah, you see,
was one of our old prophets."
"Was he seditious?" I asked.
Pilate grinned and shook his head, then said:
"He fell out with Antipas over the matter of Herodias. John was a
moralist. It is too long a story, but he paid for it with his head.
No, there was nothing political in that affair."
"It is also claimed by some that Jesus is the Son of David," Miriam
said. "But it is absurd. Nobody at Nazareth believes it. You see,
his whole family, including his married sisters, lives there and is
known to all of them. They are a simple folk, mere common people."
"I wish it were as simple, the report of all this complexity that I
must send to Tiberius," Pilate grumbled. "And now this fisherman is
come to Jerusalem, the place is packed with pilgrims ripe for any
trouble, and Hanan stirs and stirs the broth."
"And before he is done he will have his way," Miriam forecast. "He
has laid the task for you, and you will perform it."
"Which is?" Pilate queried.
"The execution of this fisherman."
Pilate shook his head stubbornly, but his wife cried out:
"No! No! It would be a shameful wrong. The man has done no evil.
He has not offended against Rome."
She looked beseechingly to Pilate, who continued to shake his head.
"Let them do their own beheading, as Antipas did," he growled. "The
fisherman counts for nothing; but I shall be no catspaw to their
schemes. If they must destroy him, they must destroy him. That is
their affair."
"But you will not permit it," cried Pilate's wife.
"A pretty time would I have explaining to Tiberius if I interfered,"
was his reply.
"No matter what happens," said Miriam, "I can see you writing
explanations, and soon; for Jesus is already come up to Jerusalem
and a number of his fishermen with him."
Pilate showed the irritation this information caused him.
"I have no interest in his movements," he pronounced. "I hope never
to see him."
"Trust Hanan to find him for you," Miriam replied, "and to bring him
to your gate."
Pilate shrugged his shoulders, and there the talk ended. Pilate's
wife, nervous and overwrought, must claim Miriam to her apartments,
so that nothing remained for me but to go to bed and doze off to the
buzz and murmur of the city of madmen.
Events moved rapidly. Over night the white heat of the city had
scorched upon itself. By midday, when I rode forth with half a
dozen of my men, the streets were packed, and more reluctant than
ever were the folk to give way before me. If looks could kill I
should have been a dead man that day. Openly they spat at sight of
me, and, everywhere arose snarls and cries.
Less was I a thing of wonder, and more was I the thing hated in that
I wore the hated harness of Rome. Had it been any other city, I
should have given command to my men to lay the flats of their swords
on those snarling fanatics. But this was Jerusalem, at fever heat,
and these were a people unable in thought to divorce the idea of
State from the idea of God.
Hanan the Sadducee had done his work well. No matter what he and
the Sanhedrim believed of the true inwardness of the situation, it
was clear this rabble had been well tutored to believe that Rome was
at the bottom of it.
I encountered Miriam in the press. She was on foot, attended only
by a woman. It was no time in such turbulence for her to be abroad
garbed as became her station. Through her sister she was indeed
sister-in-law to Antipas for whom few bore love. So she was dressed
discreetly, her face covered, so that she might pass as any Jewish
woman of the lower orders. But not to my eye could she hide that
fine stature of her, that carriage and walk, so different from other
women's, of which I had already dreamed more than once.
Few and quick were the words we were able to exchange, for the way
jammed on the moment, and soon my men and horses were being pressed
and jostled. Miriam was sheltered in an angle of house-wall.
"Have they got the fisherman yet?" I asked.
"No; but he is just outside the wall. He has ridden up to Jerusalem
on an ass, with a multitude before and behind; and some, poor dupes,
have hailed him as he passed as King of Israel. That finally is the
pretext with which Hanan will compel Pilate. Truly, though not yet
taken, the sentence is already written. This fisherman is a dead
man."
"But Pilate will not arrest him," I defended. Miriam shook her
head.
"Hanan will attend to that. They will bring him before the
Sanhedrim. The sentence will be death. They may stone him."
"But the Sanhedrim has not the right to execute," I contended.
"Jesus is not a Roman," she replied. "He is a Jew. By the law of
the Talmud he is guilty of death, for he has blasphemed against the
law."
Still I shook my head.
"The Sanhedrim has not the right."
"Pilate is willing that it should take that right."
"But it is a fine question of legality," I insisted. "You know what
the Romans are in such matters."
"Then will Hanan avoid the question," she smiled, "by compelling
Pilate to crucify him. In either event it will be well."
A surging of the mob was sweeping our horses along and grinding our
knees together. Some fanatic had fallen, and I could feel my horse
recoil and half rear as it tramped on him, and I could hear the man
screaming and the snarling menace from all about rising to a roar.
But my head was over my shoulder as I called back to Miriam:
"You are hard on a man you have said yourself is without evil."
"I am hard upon the evil that will come of him if he lives," she
replied.
Scarcely did I catch her words, for a man sprang in, seizing my
bridle-rein and leg and struggling to unhorse me. With my open
palm, leaning forward, I smote him full upon cheek and jaw. My hand
covered the face of him, and a hearty will of weight was in the
blow. The dwellers in Jerusalem are not used to man's buffets. I
have often wondered since if I broke the fellow's neck.
Next I saw Miriam was the following day. I met her in the court of
Pilate's palace. She seemed in a dream. Scarce her eyes saw me.
Scarce her wits embraced my identity. So strange was she, so in
daze and amaze and far-seeing were her eyes, that I was reminded of
the lepers I had seen healed in Samaria.
She became herself by an effort, but only her outward self. In her
eyes was a message unreadable. Never before had I seen woman's eyes
so.
She would have passed me ungreeted had I not confronted her way.
She paused and murmured words mechanically, but all the while her
eyes dreamed through me and beyond me with the largeness of the
vision that filled them.
"I have seen Him, Lodbrog," she whispered. "I have seen Him."
"The gods grant that he is not so ill-affected by the sight of you,
whoever he may be," I laughed.
She took no notice of my poor-timed jest, and her eyes remained full
with vision, and she would have passed on had I not again blocked
her way.
"Who is this he?" I demanded. "Some man raised from the dead to put
such strange light in your eyes?"
"One who has raised others from the dead," she replied. "Truly I
believe that He, this Jesus, has raised the dead. He is the Prince
of Light, the Son of God. I have seen Him. Truly I believe that He
is the Son of God."
Little could I glean from her words, save that she had met this
wandering fisherman and been swept away by his folly. For surely
this Miriam was not the Miriam who had branded him a plague and
demanded that he be stamped out as any plague.
"He has charmed you," I cried angrily.
Her eyes seemed to moisten and grow deeper as she gave confirmation.
"Oh, Lodbrog, His is charm beyond all thinking, beyond all
describing. But to look upon Him is to know that here is the all-
soul of goodness and of compassion. I have seen Him. I have heard
Him. I shall give all I have to the poor, and I shall follow Him."
Such was her certitude that I accepted it fully, as I had accepted
the amazement of the lepers of Samaria staring at their smooth
flesh; and I was bitter that so great a woman should be so easily
wit-addled by a vagrant wonder-worker.
"Follow him," I sneered. "Doubtless you will wear a crown when he
wins to his kingdom."
She nodded affirmation, and I could have struck her in the face for
her folly. I drew aside, and as she moved slowly on she murmured:
"His kingdom is not here. He is the Son of David. He is the Son of
God. He is whatever He has said, or whatever has been said of Him
that is good and great."
"A wise man of the East," I found Pilate chuckling. "He is a
thinker, this unlettered fisherman. I have sought more deeply into
him. I have fresh report. He has no need of wonder-workings. He
out-sophisticates the most sophistical of them. They have laid
traps, and He has laughed at their traps. Look you. Listen to
this."
Whereupon he told me how Jesus had confounded his confounders when
they brought to him for judgment a woman taken in adultery.
"And the tax," Pilate exulted on. "'To Caesar what is Caesar's, to
God what is God's,' was his answer to them. That was Hanan's trick,
and Hanan is confounded. At last has there appeared one Jew who
understands our Roman conception of the State."
Next I saw Pilate's wife. Looking into her eyes I knew, on the
instant, after having seen Miriam's eyes, that this tense,
distraught woman had likewise seen the fisherman.
"The Divine is within Him," she murmured to me. "There is within
Him a personal awareness of the indwelling of God."
"Is he God?" I queried, gently, for say something I must.
She shook her head.
"I do not know. He has not said. But this I know: of such stuff
gods are made."
"A charmer of women," was my privy judgment, as I left Pilate's wife
walking in dreams and visions.
The last days are known to all of you who read these lines, and it
was in those last days that I learned that this Jesus was equally a
charmer of men. He charmed Pilate. He charmed me.
After Hanan had sent Jesus to Caiaphas, and the Sanhedrim, assembled
in Caiaphas's house, had condemned Jesus to death, Jesus, escorted
by a howling mob, was sent to Pilate for execution.
Now, for his own sake and for Rome's sake, Pilate did not want to
execute him. Pilate was little interested in the fisherman and
greatly interested in peace and order. What cared Pilate for a
man's life?--for many men's lives? The school of Rome was iron, and
the governors sent out by Rome to rule conquered peoples were
likewise iron. Pilate thought and acted in governmental
abstractions. Yet, look: when Pilate went out scowling to meet the
mob that had fetched the fisherman, he fell immediately under the
charm of the man.
I was present. I know. It was the first time Pilate had ever seen
him. Pilate went out angry. Our soldiers were in readiness to
clear the court of its noisy vermin. And immediately Pilate laid
eyes on the fisherman Pilate was subdued--nay, was solicitous. He
disclaimed jurisdiction, demanded that they should judge the
fisherman by their law and deal with him by their law, since the
fisherman was a Jew and not a Roman. Never were there Jews so
obedient to Roman rule. They cried out that it was unlawful, under
Rome, for them to put any man to death. Yet Antipas had beheaded
John and come to no grief of it.
And Pilate left them in the court, open under the sky, and took
Jesus alone into the judgment hall. What happened therein I know
not, save that when Pilate emerged he was changed. Whereas before
he had been disinclined to execute because he would not be made a
catspaw to Hanan, he was now disinclined to execute because of
regard for the fisherman. His effort now was to save the fisherman.
And all the while the mob cried: "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
You, my reader, know the sincerity of Pilate's effort. You know how
he tried to befool the mob, first by mocking Jesus as a harmless
fool; and second by offering to release him according to the custom
of releasing one prisoner at time of the Passover. And you know how
the priests' quick whisperings led the mob to cry out for the
release of the murderer Bar-Abba.
In vain Pilate struggled against the fate being thrust upon him by
the priests. By sneer and jibe he hoped to make a farce of the
transaction. He laughingly called Jesus the King of the Jews and
ordered him to be scourged. His hope was that all would end in
laughter and in laugher be forgotten.
I am glad to say that no Roman soldiers took part in what followed.
It was the soldiers of the auxiliaries who crowned and cloaked
Jesus, put the reed of sovereignty in his hand, and, kneeling,
hailed him King of the Jews. Although it failed, it was a play to
placate. And I, looking on, learned the charm of Jesus. Despite
the cruel mockery of situation, he was regal. And I was quiet as I
gazed. It was his own quiet that went into me. I was soothed and
satisfied, and was without bewilderment. This thing had to be. All
was well. The serenity of Jesus in the heart of the tumult and pain
became my serenity. I was scarce moved by any thought to save him.
On the other hand, I had gazed on too many wonders of the human in
my wild and varied years to be affected to foolish acts by this
particular wonder. I was all serenity. I had no word to say. I
had no judgment to pass. I knew that things were occurring beyond
my comprehension, and that they must occur.
Still Pilate struggled. The tumult increased. The cry for blood
rang through the court, and all were clamouring for crucifixion.
Again Pilate went back into the judgment hall. His effort at a
farce having failed, he attempted to disclaim jurisdiction. Jesus
was not of Jerusalem. He was a born subject of Antipas, and to
Antipas Pilate was for sending Jesus.
But the uproar was by now communicating itself to the city. Our
troops outside the palace were being swept away in the vast street
mob. Rioting had begun that in the flash of an eye could turn into
civil war and revolution. My own twenty legionaries were close to
hand and in readiness. They loved the fanatic Jews no more than did
I, and would have welcomed my command to clear the court with naked
steel.
When Pilate came out again his words for Antipas' jurisdiction could
not be heard, for all the mob was shouting that Pilate was a
traitor, that if he let the fisherman go he was no friend of
Tiberius. Close before me, as I leaned against the wall, a mangy,
bearded, long-haired fanatic sprang up and down unceasingly, and
unceasingly chanted: "Tiberius is emperor; there is no king!
Tiberius is emperor; there is no king!" I lost patience. The man's
near noise was an offence. Lurching sidewise, as if by accident, I
ground my foot on his to a terrible crushing. The fool seemed not
to notice. He was too mad to be aware of the pain, and he continued
to chant: "Tiberius is emperor; there is no king!"
I saw Pilate hesitate. Pilate, the Roman governor, for the moment
was Pilate the man, with a man's anger against the miserable
creatures clamouring for the blood of so sweet and simple, brave and
good a spirit as this Jesus.
I saw Pilate hesitate. His gaze roved to me, as if he were about to
signal to me to let loose; and I half-started forward, releasing the
mangled foot under my foot. I was for leaping to complete that
half-formed wish of Pilate and to sweep away in blood and cleanse
the court of the wretched scum that howled in it.
It was not Pilate's indecision that decided me. It was this Jesus
that decided Pilate and me. This Jesus looked at me. He commanded
me. I tell you this vagrant fisherman, this wandering preacher,
this piece of driftage from Galilee, commanded me. No word he
uttered. Yet his command was there, unmistakable as a trumpet call.
And I stayed my foot, and held my hand, for who was I to thwart the
will and way of so greatly serene and sweetly sure a man as this?
And as I stayed I knew all the charm of him--all that in him had
charmed Miriam and Pilate's wife, that had charmed Pilate himself.
You know the rest. Pilate washed his hands of Jesus' blood, and the
rioters took his blood upon their own heads. Pilate gave orders for
the crucifixion. The mob was content, and content, behind the mob,
were Caiaphas, Hanan, and the Sanhedrim. Not Pilate, not Tiberius,
not Roman soldiers crucified Jesus. It was the priestly rulers and
priestly politicians of Jerusalem. I saw. I know. And against his
own best interests Pilate would have saved Jesus, as I would have,
had it not been that no other than Jesus himself willed that he was
not to be saved.
Yes, and Pilate had his last sneer at this people he detested. In
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin he had a writing affixed to Jesus' cross
which read, "The King of the Jews." In vain the priests complained.
It was on this very pretext that they had forced Pilate's hand; and
by this pretext, a scorn and insult to the Jewish race, Pilate
abided. Pilate executed an abstraction that had never existed in
the real. The abstraction was a cheat and a lie manufactured in the
priestly mind. Neither the priests nor Pilate believed it. Jesus
denied it. That abstraction was "The King of the Jews."
The storm was over in the courtyard. The excitement had simmered
down. Revolution had been averted. The priests were content, the
mob was satisfied, and Pilate and I were well disgusted and weary
with the whole affair. And yet for him and me was more and most
immediate storm. Before Jesus was taken away one of Miriam's women
called me to her. And I saw Pilate, summoned by one of his wife's
women, likewise obey.
"Oh, Lodbrog, I have heard," Miriam met me. We were alone, and she
was close to me, seeking shelter and strength within my arms.
"Pilate has weakened. He is going to crucify Him. But there is
time. Your own men are ready. Ride with them. Only a centurion
and a handful of soldiers are with Him. They have not yet started.
As soon as they do start, follow. They must not reach Golgotha.
But wait until they are outside the city wall. Then countermand the
order. Take an extra horse for Him to ride. The rest is easy.
Ride away into Syria with Him, or into Idumaea, or anywhere so long
as He be saved."
She concluded with her arms around my neck, her face upturned to
mine and temptingly close, her eyes greatly solemn and greatly
promising.
Small wonder I was slow of speech. For the moment there was but one
thought in my brain. After all the strange play I had seen played
out, to have this come upon me! I did not misunderstand. The thing
was clear. A great woman was mine if . . . if I betrayed Rome. For
Pilate was governor, his order had gone forth; and his voice was the
voice of Rome.
As I have said, it was the woman of her, her sheer womanliness, that
betrayed Miriam and me in the end. Always she had been so clear, so
reasonable, so certain of herself and me, so that I had forgotten,
or, rather, I there learned once again the eternal lesson learned in
all lives, that woman is ever woman . . . that in great decisive
moments woman does not reason but feels; that the last sanctuary and
innermost pulse to conduct is in woman's heart and not in woman's
head.
Miriam misunderstood my silence, for her body moved softly within my
arms as she added, as if in afterthought:
"Take two spare horses, Lodbrog. I shall ride the other . . . with
you . . . with you, away over the world, wherever you may ride."
It was a bribe of kings; it was an act, paltry and contemptible,
that was demanded of me in return. Still I did not speak. It was
not that I was in confusion or in any doubt. I was merely sad--
greatly and suddenly sad, in that I knew I held in my arms what I
would never hold again.
"There is but one man in Jerusalem this day who can save Him," she
urged, "and that man is you, Lodbrog."
Because I did not immediately reply she shook me, as if in impulse
to clarify wits she considered addled. She shook me till my harness
rattled.
"Speak, Lodbrog, speak!" she commanded. "You are strong and
unafraid. You are all man. I know you despise the vermin who would
destroy Him. You, you alone can save Him. You have but to say the
word and the thing is done; and I will well love you and always love
you for the thing you have done."
"I am a Roman," I said slowly, knowing full well that with the words
I gave up all hope of her.
"You are a man-slave of Tiberius, a hound of Rome," she flamed, "but
you owe Rome nothing, for you are not a Roman. You yellow giants of
the north are not Romans."
"The Romans are the elder brothers of us younglings of the north," I
answered. "Also, I wear the harness and I eat the bread of Rome."
Gently I added: "But why all this fuss and fury for a mere man's
life? All men must die. Simple and easy it is to die. To-day, or
a hundred years, it little matters. Sure we are, all of us, of the
same event in the end."
Quick she was, and alive with passion to save as she thrilled within
my arms.
"You do not understand, Lodbrog. This is no mere man. I tell you
this is a man beyond men--a living God, not of men, but over men."
I held her closely and knew that I was renouncing all the sweet
woman of her as I said:
"We are man and woman, you and I. Our life is of this world. Of
these other worlds is all a madness. Let these mad dreamers go the
way of their dreaming. Deny them not what they desire above all
things, above meat and wine, above song and battle, even above love
of woman. Deny them not their hearts' desires that draw them across
the dark of the grave to their dreams of lives beyond this world.
Let them pass. But you and I abide here in all the sweet we have
discovered of each other. Quickly enough will come the dark, and
you depart for your coasts of sun and flowers, and I for the roaring
table of Valhalla."
"No! no!" she cried, half-tearing herself away. "You do not
understand. All of greatness, all of goodness, all of God are in
this man who is more than man; and it is a shameful death to die.
Only slaves and thieves so die. He is neither slave nor thief. He
is an immortal. He is God. Truly I tell you He is God."
"He is immortal you say," I contended. "Then to die to-day on
Golgotha will not shorten his immortality by a hair's breadth in the
span of time. He is a god you say. Gods cannot die. From all I
have been told of them, it is certain that gods cannot die."
"Oh!" she cried. "You will not understand. You are only a great
giant thing of flesh."
"Is it not said that this event was prophesied of old time?" I
queried, for I had been learning from the Jews what I deemed their
subtleties of thinking.
"Yes, yes," she agreed, "the Messianic prophecies. This is the
Messiah."
"Then who am I," I asked, "to make liars of the prophets? to make of
the Messiah a false Messiah? Is the prophecy of your people so
feeble a thing that I, a stupid stranger, a yellow northling in the
Roman harness, can give the lie to prophecy and compel to be
unfulfilled--the very thing willed by the gods and foretold by the
wise men?"
"You do not understand," she repeated.
"I understand too well," I replied. "Am I greater than the gods
that I may thwart the will of the gods? Then are gods vain things
and the playthings of men. I am a man. I, too, bow to the gods, to
all gods, for I do believe in all gods, else how came all gods to
be?"
She flung herself so that my hungry arms were empty of her, and we
stood apart and listened to the uproar of the street as Jesus and
the soldiers emerged and started on their way. And my heart was
sore in that so great a woman could be so foolish. She would save
God. She would make herself greater than God.
"You do not love me," she said slowly, and slowly grew in her eyes a
promise of herself too deep and wide for any words.
"I love you beyond your understanding, it seems," was my reply. "I
am proud to love you, for I know I am worthy to love you and am
worth all love you may give me. But Rome is my foster-mother, and
were I untrue to her, of little pride, of little worth would be my
love for you."
The uproar that followed about Jesus and the soldiers died away
along the street. And when there was no further sound of it Miriam
turned to go, with neither word nor look for me.
I knew one last rush of mad hunger for her. I sprang and seized
her. I would horse her and ride away with her and my men into Syria
away from this cursed city of folly. She struggled. I crushed her.
She struck me on the face, and I continued to hold and crush her,
for the blows were sweet. And there she ceased to struggle. She
became cold and motionless, so that I knew there was no woman's love
that my arms girdled. For me she was dead. Slowly I let go of her.
Slowly she stepped back. As if she did not see me she turned and
went away across the quiet room, and without looking back passed
through the hangings and was gone.
I, Ragnar Lodbrog, never came to read nor write. But in my days I
have listened to great talk. As I see it now, I never learned great
talk, such as that of the Jews, learned in their law, nor such as
that of the Romans, learned in their philosophy and in the
philosophy of the Greeks. Yet have I talked in simplicity and
straightness, as a man may well talk who has lived life from the
ships of Tostig Lodbrog and the roof of Brunanbuhr across the world
to Jerusalem and back again. And straight talk and simple I gave
Sulpicius Quirinius, when I went away into Syria to report to him of
the various matters that had been at issue in Jerusalem. _