Читать книгу The Robber - Bertram Brooker - Страница 14

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They stepped from the shadow of a porch, descended three steps and halted on the grass. The moon had risen to the zenith. They were facing a glory of light.

To Barabbas it was like taking a deep breath of eternity to come out from the crushing luxury of mosaic-covered ceilings into the vast air, freshened by the leafy scent of spring. His ears murmured like sea shells as the enormous silence seemed to rush past him. Lifting his head, he surveyed the sky from east to west. His arms spread widely. He grasped the night and held it, as though it were a fruit he had picked.

The palace stood on the highest knoll of Bezetha. Seven terraces of grass sloped gently to a wooded ravine. A white limestone cliff marked the edge of a precipice which went down in a sheer drop to the bank of the Kedron. Across the valley the full glow of moon and stars silvered the tapestry of orchards which rose in a mounting pattern to the bald crest of Olivet.

At the lower end of the garden a familiar rounded shape, lying against the cliff, drew Barabbas's gaze. It was a chipped slab of rock, resembling the stones commonly rolled in a groove to seal the entrance of sepulchres.

"Is that a tomb?" he asked, in astonishment.

Judas started, withdrew his hands from his sleeves, and said in a dreaming voice: "Yes, his. Joseph's."

"A new tomb ... so near a dwelling?"

"When the prince built this house," said Judas, "the death of his wife and his parents lingered in his heart like ashes. If it had not been for Jerith he might have died. He built himself a sepulchre, in the hope, perhaps, that he would soon lie in it."

Judas broke off, hearing a footfall behind him. It was Prince Joseph coming from the house. He came near and stood beside them.

"It is better here," said the prince softly.

"Yes," said Barabbas. "This is a better roof which God provides."

The prince lifted his head. "Nothing can excel it on such a wondrous night."

"Every night is wondrous in its own way," said Barabbas, "but in the cities men come and go without seeing the sky or feeling the secret of birth and growth and death in the soil under their feet. I myself was like that before I embraced the earth."

Joseph's eyes kindled. "That is well spoken."

"It is more than words. It happens in the heart."

"An experience, as the Romans say," murmured Joseph.

"I know little Latin," said Barabbas proudly.

"You have seen and felt something that is strange to me," the prince said.

As he spoke he led the way toward a circle of slender trees. Barabbas cast a glance behind him at the house and then saw ahead of him a wide crescent-shaped seat of white marble partly encircling a pool. The sound of splashing water came clearly through the warm windless air.

"You speak as one who lives in a sort of Paradise," the prince was saying. "Your joy is like that of the birds of the air. You have discovered what I consider a sense of lost power in mankind. Tell me how you have found it, Jeshua."

"What I have found cannot be encompassed in words," said Barabbas, impatiently. "It is something felt in the heart."

"I believe it," cried the prince, eagerly. "But there must be a path for us to discover it. There must be steps."

"There is only one step."

They had reached the circle of young acacia trees. In the rippled pool, stirred by the fall of water from the mouth of a sculptured dolphin, the reflected stars were dancing like tongues of greenish fire.

Barabbas spread wide his hands to include in one gesture the pool, the terraces, the turreted house, and the strong walls of the garden. "The one step," he said, "is to turn your back on all this. Sell all that you have and give the gain among the poor. The day of kings and princes is over."

Judas took three rapid steps to Joseph's side. "You hear him? And yet you say you will take him to the tetrarch?"

"Antipas has need of him," the prince said, calmly. "What he says has often been in my thoughts."

The prince motioned Judas to the carved semicircular seat, and sat down himself. Barabbas dropped down beside the pool and stretched out his legs.

At that moment Joseph saw the steward coming from the house, and waited until Zimri had put down the tray of fruit and wine beside him on the seat.

"We will help ourselves," he said.

The old man bowed and disappeared through the trees.

Joseph poured wine into three goblets and passed them. Then he set the bowl of fruit on the grass beside Barabbas.

"Tomorrow I will get you an audience with Antipas," he said. "He is more anxious than ever to send a message by someone John will trust. John would not trust me. Like you, Jeshua, he puts no trust in princes. And at the time I went, Antipas did not trust me fully, either. He has been in some sort of terror ever since I have known him, but now he has become pitiful. He has brought himself to believe that John is the risen spirit of one of the innocent babes his father slaughtered."

"It is a pity John did not come," said Barabbas, with bitter humour. "The sight of him would give Antipas the palsy. He looks like a risen skeleton."

"And he lives east of Jordan," added the prince. "Antipas has a great dread of whatever comes out of the east. When he was a boy he saw a fiery star that came out of the east, and he has told me of his father's fear at the sight of it."

"This Antipas!" broke in Barabbas, roughly. "Is he not the son of a Samaritan and an Edomite? And yet you, a prince of Judah, call him your friend! You speak as one who knows him."

"I have known him all my life. He is a pitiful man. In Rome I could not avoid him. Here, it is different. He comes to Jerusalem only for the feasts. I see him rarely. I have no love for him."

"Nor for his wife? Is she not your cousin?"

"She is my cousin. God gave me my cousins. I did not choose them."

The prince lifted his wine cup and bent over it, sipping silently. "I was saying that Antipas has a great fear of evil coming upon him out of the east," he said, after a pause. "Now he fears invasion from that quarter. He is in terror of the Arabs."

"He may well be," said Barabbas.

"You have heard then that he affronted the Arabs when he deserted the princess Thamis, the daughter of their king, to marry my cousin, Herodias?"

"That I have heard, and much besides. They have not forgotten his father, or his bloodthirsty brother, Archelaus. He, and all of Herod's breed, may well fear them."

"Antipas has a strong fortress at Machaerus. Nevertheless, he is in terror of calamity from that quarter. He is afraid of John because his threats of judgment come from east of Jordan, and of late he has grown to fear another man who lives east of the river, a robber, named Barabbas. He is the son of a rebel, and a rebel himself, they say. He despises kings and princes. He threatens to dethrone them, remove all governors, and divide the earth's possessions equally among all men."

The prince had raised his voice so that every word could be heard clearly over the noise of the water splashing into the pool. His brows arched and he smiled inwardly.

Barabbas smiled back at him. "I have heard of this robber," he said evenly.

"He is half a head taller than the majority of men."

"That is what they say."

"He has a scar which runs the whole length of his left jaw."

"You have seen him?" asked Barabbas.

"When I went across Jordan a second time, I heard that this man was a friend of John's, and I hoped I might meet him at the Bethabara pools, or even fall into his hands on the highroad. I wished to hear from his own mouth how he plans to change the nature of man, so that the lion will lie down with the lamb, so that the wolf and the sheep will eat grass together."

"And sip wine together," said Barabbas, challengingly, as he lifted his cup.

Judas sprang up with a warning gasp, but the prince said smilingly: "Yes, Barabbas. Let us drink."

Barabbas sipped and set the heavy silver goblet down beside him in the grass.

"The prince has recognized you!" cried Judas. "What will happen tomorrow in the streets?..."

"Will you denounce me?" taunted Barabbas, looking from one to the other.

"Stay here, will you not?" said Joseph. "No one will look for a rebel who despises princes in the house of a prince."

Judas drew his hands down over his cheeks in a doleful gesture. "But how can you take him to the king?" he mumbled. "You say yourself the king has heard of him. When he looks on his face ..."

"Antipas will not know you," said Joseph. "You will be carefully disguised."

"In the presence of the king he will mock," cried Judas. "He will do more than mock. I know his old hatred."

"Surely you will listen to what Antipas has in his heart to say to John. When Antipas came here at the Passover," said Joseph, "he heard that I had talked with John, and he sent for me secretly, and told me that there was a plot against John's life."

"No doubt he has heard in his own palace, that Herodias has sworn to silence the Baptist's tongue," burst out Barabbas. "We have heard it, even across Jordan."

"I know little of the plot, and that little I cannot reveal," said the prince. "All I can tell you is that he fears for John's safety. My part in all this was to persuade John to come to the palace ..."

"Where he could be charged with some crime and put to death," pounced Barabbas, savagely.

"That would make Antipas accountable for him," said Joseph. "Whereas if John should be found dead in his cave, of poison or a dagger stroke, who could be accused? No. Antipas wants to make him some offer. He urged me to go, and I went, believing John's life was in danger, but I could not tell him of the danger. Neither could I persuade him even to send a kinsman. He said he had no kin. But you have come, Barabbas, and tomorrow, if you love John, you will listen to the tetrarch. You will not enrage him. Let him say what is in his heart. Let John judge whether or not he can trust him, from what you will witness."

He broke off, seeing Judas suddenly spring up, and peer through the trees.

"Jerith is here," Judas breathed in an excited whisper.

Barabbas stared across the marble rim of the pool. A figure in white had reached the lowest terrace.