"Will you follow me, children?"
"To death!" shouted they.
"I know it. Oh that I had seven hundred of you, as Abraham had! We would see then whether these scoundrels did not share, within a week, the fate of Chedorlaomer"s."
"Happy man, who can actually trust your own slaves!" said Raphael, as the party galloped on, tightening their girdles and getting ready their weapons.
"Slaves? If the law gives me the power of selling one or two of them who are not yet wise enough to be trusted to take care of themselves, it is a fact which both I and they have long forgotten. Their fathers grew gray at my father"s table, and G.o.d grant that they may grow gray at mine! We eat together, work together, hunt together, fight together, jest together, and weep together. G.o.d help us all! for we have but one common weal. Now-do you make out the enemy, boys?"
"Ausurians, your Holiness. The same party who tried Myrsinitis last week. I know them by the helmets which they took from the Markmen."
"And with whom are they fighting?"
No one could see. Fighting they certainly were: but their victims were beyond them, and the party galloped on.
"That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians appeared while the people were at morning prayers. The soldiers, of course, ran for their lives, and hid in the caverns, leaving the matter to the priests."
"If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved themselves worthy of their diocesan."
"Ah, if all my priests were but like them! or my people either!" said Synesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a true son of the saddle. "They offered up prayers for victory, sallied out at the head of the peasants, and met the Moors in a narrow pa.s.s. There their hearts failed them a little. Faustus, the deacon, makes them a speech; charges the leader of the robbers, like young David, with a stone, beats his brains out therewith, strips him in true Homeric fashion, and routs the Ausurians with their leader"s sword; returns and erects a trophy in due cla.s.sic form, and saves the whole valley."
"You should make him archdeacon."
"I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if I could, crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every market-place, "These are men of G.o.d." With whom can those Ausurians be dealing? Peasants would have been all killed long ago, and soldiers would have run away long ago. It is truly a portent in this country to see a fight last ten minutes. Who can they be? I see them now, and hewing away like men too. They are all on foot but two; and we have not a cohort of infantry left for many a mile round."
"I know who they are!" cried Raphael, suddenly striking spurs into his horse. "I will swear to that armour among a thousand. And there is a litter in the midst of them. On! and fight, men, if you ever fought in your lives!"
"Softly!" cried Synesius. "Trust an old soldier, and perhaps-alas! that he should have to say it-the best left in this wretched country. Round by the hollow, and take the barbarians suddenly in flank. They will not see us then till we are within twenty paces of them. Aha! you have a thing or two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra."
And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop wheeled his little troop and in five minutes more dashed out of the copse with a shout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into the thickest of the fight.
One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses, a flashing of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, and then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by their neighbours" knees, and have not cut off their own horses" heads instead of their enemies", find themselves, they know not how, either running away or being run away from-not one blow in ten having taken effect on either side. And even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cut down several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an altogether undignified posture, among innumerable horses" legs, in all possible frantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the way of another; so he philosophically sat still, speculating on the sensation of having his brains kicked out, till the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himself kneeling abjectly opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat, utterly unmoved, a tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The stranger, instead of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly lifted his hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet, heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausurians galloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standing close by him, wiping a b.l.o.o.d.y sword.
"Is the litter safe"?" were his first words.
"Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you run through with that lance.
"Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said Raphael, laughing.
"Probably the fellow took the b.u.t.t instead of the point, in his hurry. So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four fellows running with the flat of your sword."
Ah, that explains," said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the best swordsman on the Armenian frontier...."
"I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors," said Synesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the first time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then turned haughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, "Clumsy fool that I was!"
"Thank G.o.d rather that you have been kept from the shedding of blood," said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with a peculiarly clear and delicate enunciation. "If G.o.d have given us the victory, why grudge His having spared any other of His creatures besides ourselves?"
"Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish, burn, and slay," answered Synesius. "Nevertheless, I am not going to argue with Augustine."
Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle but unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quiet eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out volcano, over which centuries must pa.s.s before the earthquake-rents be filled with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with gra.s.s and flowers. The Jew"s thoughts, however, were soon turned into another channel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his son.
"We have caught you again, you truant!" said the young Tribune; "you could not escape us, you see, after all."
"Rather," said the father, "we owe him a second debt of grat.i.tude for a second deliverance. We were right hard bested when you rode up."
"Oh, he brings nothing but good with him whenever he appears; and then he pretends to be a bird of ill-omen," said the light-hearted Tribune, putting his armour to rights.
Raphael was in his secret heart not sorry to find that his old friends bore him no grudge for his caprice; but all he answered was- "Pray thank any one but me; I have, as usual, proved myself a fool. But what brings you here, like G.o.ds e Machina? It is contrary to all probabilities. One would not admit so astounding an incident, even in the modern drama."
"Contrary to none whatsoever, my friend. We found Augustine at Berenice, in act to set off to Synesius: we-one of us, that is-were certain that you would be found with him; and we decided on acting as Augustine"s guard, for none of the dastard garrison dare stir out."
"One of us," thought Raphael,-"which one?" And, conquering his pride, he asked, as carelessly as he could, for Victoria.
"She is there in the litter, poor child!" said her father in a serious tone.
"Surely not ill?"
"Alas! either the overwrought excitement of months of heroism broke down when she found us safe at last" or some stroke from G.o.d-.... Who can tell what I may not have deserved?-But she has been utterly prostrate in body and mind, ever since we parted from you at Berenice."
The blunt soldier little guessed the meaning of his own words. But Raphael, as he heard, felt a pang shoot through his heart, too keen for him to discern whether it sprang from joy or from despair.
"Come," cried the cheerful voice of Synesius, "come, Aben-Ezra; you have knelt for Augustine"s blessing already, and now you must enter into the fruition of it. Come, you two philosophers must know each other. Most holy, I entreat you to preach to this friend of mine, at once the wisest and the foolishest of men."
"Only the latter," said Raphael; "but open to any speech of Augustine"s, at least when we are safe home, and game enough for Synesius"s new guests killed."
And turning away, he rode silent and sullen by the side of his companions, who began at once to consult together as to the plans of Majoricus and his soldiers.
In spite of himself, Raphael soon became interested in Augustine"s conversation. He entered into the subject of Cyrenian misrule and ruin as heartily and shrewdly as any man of the world; and when all the rest were at a loss, the prompt practical hint which cleared up the difficulty was certain to come from him. It was by his advice that Majoricus had brought his soldiery hither; it was his proposal that they should be employed for a fixed period in defending these remote southern boundaries of the province; he checked the impetuosity of Synesius, cheered the despair of Majoricus, appealed to the honour and the Christianity of the soldiers, and seemed to have a word-and that the right word-for every man; and after a while, Aben-Ezra quite forgot the stiffness and deliberation of his manner, and the quaint use of Scripture texts in far-fetched ill.u.s.trations of every opinion which he propounded. It had seemed at first a mere affectation; but the arguments which it was employed to enforce were in themselves so moderate and so rational that Raphael began to feel, little by little, that his apparent pedantry was only the result of a wish to refer every matter, even the most vulgar, to some deep and divine rule of right and wrong.
"But you forget all this while, my friends," said Majoricus at last, "the danger which you incur by sheltering proclaimed rebels."
"The King of kings has forgiven your rebellion, in that while He has punished you by the loss of your lands and honours, He has given you your life for a prey in this city of refuge. It remains for you to bring forth worthy fruits of penitence; of which I know none better than those which John the Baptist commanded to the soldiery of old, "Do no violence to any man, and be content with your wages.""
"As for rebels and rebellion," said Synesius, "they are matters unknown among as; for where there is no king there can be no rebellion. Whosoever will help us against Ausurians is loyal in our eyes. And as for our political creed, it is simple enough-namely, that the emperor never dies, and that his name is Agamemnon, who fought at Troy; which any of my grooms will prove to you syllogistically enough to satisfy Augustine himself. As thus-
"Agamemnon was the greatest and the best of kings.
"The emperor is the greatest and the best of kings.
"Therefore, Agamemnon is the emperor, and conversely."
"It had been well," said Augustine, with a grave smile, "if some of our friends had held the same doctrine, even at the expense of their logic."
"Or if," answered Synesius, "they believed with us, that the emperor"s chamberlain is a clever old man, with a bald head like my own, Ulysses by name, who was rewarded with the prefecture of all lands north of the Mediterranean, for putting out the Cyclop"s eye two years ago. However, enough of this. But you see, you are not in any extreme danger of informers and intriguers.... The real difficulty is, how you will be able to obey Augustine, by being content with your wages. For," lowering his voice, "you will get literally none."
"It will be as much as we deserve," said the young Tribune: "but my fellows have a trick of eating-"
"They are welcome, then, to all deer and ostriches which they can catch. But I am not only penniless, but reduced myself to live, like the Laestrygons, on meat and nothing else; all crops and stocks for miles round being either burnt or carried off."