Pearl-Maiden: A Tale of the Fall of JerusalemHaggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
History
Pearl-Maiden: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
Historical fiction; Jerusalem -- History -- Fiction
“Don’t try to remember them,” he said cheerfully. “There is so much in
life that it is better to forget. Yes, this is Tyre, sure enough. You
could not recognise it last night because it was too dark, and this
garden, I am told, did belong to Benoni. Who it belongs to now I do not
know. To you, I suppose, and through you to Cæsar.”
Now while he spoke thus somewhat at random, for he was watching her all
the while, Miriam kept her eyes fixed upon his face, as though she
searched there for something which she could but half recall. Suddenly
an inspiration entered into them and she said:
“Now I have it! You are the Roman captain, Gallus, who brought me the
letter from——” and she paused, thrusting her hand into the bosom of her
robe, then went on with something like a sob: “Oh! it is gone. How did
it go? Let me think.”
“Don’t think,” said Gallus; “there are so many things in the world
which it is better not to think about. Yes, as it happens, I am that
man, and some years ago I did bring you the letter from Marcus, called
The Fortunate. Also, as it chanced, I never forgot your sweet face and
knew it again at a time when it was well that you should find a friend.
No, we won’t talk about it now. Look, the old slave calls you. It is
time that you should break your fast, and I also must eat and have my
wound dressed. Afterwards we will talk.”
All that morning Miriam saw nothing more of Gallus. Indeed, he did not
mean that she should, since he was sure that her new-found sense ought
not to be overstrained at first, lest it should break down again, never
to recover. So she went out and sat alone by the garden beach, for the
soldiers had orders to respect her privacy, and gazed at the sea.
As she sat thus in quiet, event by event the terrible past came back to
her. She remembered it all now—their flight from Tyre; the march into
Jerusalem; the sojourn in the dark with the Essenes; the Old Tower and
what befell there; the escape of Marcus; her trial before the
Sanhedrim; the execution of her sentence upon the gateway; and then
that fearful night when the flames of the burning Temple scorched to
her very brain, and the sights and sounds of slaughter withered her
heart. After this she could recall but one more thing—the vision of the
majestic figure of Benoni standing against a background of black smoke
upon the lofty cloister-roof and defying the Romans before he plunged
headlong in the flames beneath. Of her rescue on the roof of the Gate
Nicanor, of her being carried before Titus Cæsar in the arms of Gallus,
and of his judgment concerning her she recollected nothing. Nor,
indeed, did she ever attain to a clear memory of those events, while
the time between them and the recovery of her reason by the seashore in
the garden at Tyre always remained a blank. That troubled fragment of
her life was sunk in a black sea of oblivion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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