CHAPTER XVII

THE FIRST STONE

[Initial B]

But the young men would hold their hands no longer. Impatient of delay, and encouraged by a sign from their leader, they rushed in upon the prisoners. Esca shielded Mariamne with his body. Calchas, pale and motionless, calmly awaited his fate. Gioras, the son of Simeon, a prominent warrior amongst the Sicarii, hurling on him a block of granite with merciless energy, struck the old man bleeding to the earth; but while the missile left his hands—while he yet stood erect and with extended arms, a Roman arrow quivered in the aggressor’s heart. He fell upon his face stone dead at the very feet of his victim. That random shaft was but the first herald of the storm. In another moment a huge mass of rock, projected from a powerful catapult against the building, falling short of its mark, struck the prophet as he sat moaning on the ground, and crushed him a lifeless, shapeless mass beneath its weight. Then rose a cry of despair from the outer wall—a confused noise of strife and shouting, the peal of the trumpets, the cheer of the conquerors, the wild roar of defiance and despair from the besieged. Ere long fugitives were pouring through the court, seeking the shelter of the Temple itself. There was no time to complete the execution—no time to think of the prisoners. John of Gischala, summoning his adherents, and bidding the young men hasten for their armour, betook himself to his stronghold within the Sacred Place. The Sanhedrim fled in consternation, although Matthias and the braver of his colleagues died afterwards in the streets, as became them, under shield. In a few minutes the Court of the Gentiles was again clear, save for the prisoners, one of whom was bound, and one mangled and bleeding on the pavement, tended by Mariamne, who bent over her kinsman in speechless sorrow and consternation. The fragment of rock, too, which had been propelled against the Temple, lay in the centre, over the crushed and flattened body of the prophet, whose hand and arm alone protruded from beneath the mass. The place did not thus remain in solitude for long. Fighting their retreat step by step, and, although driven backward, contesting every yard with their faces to the enemy, the flower of the Jewish army soon passed through, in the best order they could maintain, as they retired upon the Temple. Among the last of these was Eleazar; hopeless now, for he knew all was lost, but brave and unconquered still. He cast one look of affection at his brother’s prostrate form, one of astonishment and reproof on his kneeling child; but ere he could approach or even speak to her, he was swept on with the resistless tide of the defeated, ebbing before the advance of the Roman host.

And now Esca’s eye kindled, and his blood mounted, to a well‐known battle‐ cry. He had heard it in the deadly circus; he had heard it on the crumbling breach; he had heard it wherever blows rained hard and blood flowed free, and men fought doggedly and hopelessly, without a chance or a wish for escape. His heart leaped to the cheer of the gladiators, rising fierce, reckless, and defiant above all the combined din of war, and he knew that his old comrades and late antagonists had carried the defences with their wonted bravery, as they led the Roman army to the assault.

The Legion of the Lost had indeed borne themselves nobly on this occasion. Their leader had not spared them; for Hippias well knew that to‐day, with the handful left him by slaughter and disease, he must play his last stake for riches and distinction; nor had his followers failed to answer gallantly to his call. Though opposed by Eleazar himself and the best he could muster, they had carried the breach at the first onset—they had driven the Jews before them with a wild headlong charge that no courage could resist, and they had entered the outskirts of the Temple almost at the same moment with its discomfited defenders. It was their trumpets sounding the advance that reached Mariamne’s ear as she stood in the Court of the Gentiles, awaiting the vengeance she had defied. And amongst this courageous band two combatants had especially signalised themselves by feats of reckless and unusual daring. The one was old Hirpinus, who felt thoroughly in his element in such a scene, and whose natural valour was enhanced by the consciousness of the superiority he had now attained as a soldier over his former profession of a gladiator. The other was a comrade whom none could identify; who was conspicuous no less from his flowing locks, his beautiful form, and his golden armour, than from the audacity with which he courted danger, and the immunity he seemed to enjoy, in common with those who display a real contempt for death.

As he followed the golden headpiece and the long brown hair, that made way so irresistibly through the press, more than one stout swordsman exulted in the belief that some tutelary deity of his country had descended in human shape to aid the Roman arms; and Titus himself inquired, and waited in vain for an answer, “Who was that dashing warrior, with white arms and shining corselet, leading the gladiators so gallantly to the attack?”

But old Hirpinus knew, and smiled within his helmet as he fought. “The captain is well rid of her,” thought he, congratulating himself the while on his own freedom from such inconveniences. “For all her comely face and winning laugh, I had rather have a tigress loose in my tent than this fair, fickle, fighting fury, who takes to shield and spear as other women do to the shuttle and the distaff!”

Valeria, in truth, deserved little credit for her bravery. While apprehension of danger never for a moment overmastered her, the excitement of its presence seemed to offer a temporary relief to her wounded and remorseful heart. In the fierce rush of battle she had no leisure to dwell on thoughts that had lately tortured her to madness; and the very physical exertion such a scene demanded, brought with it, although she was unconscious of its severity, a sure anodyne for mental suffering. Like all persons, too, who are unaccustomed to bodily perils, the impunity with which she affronted each imparted an overweening confidence in her good fortune, and an undue contempt for the next, till it seemed to herself that she bore a charmed life; and that, though man after man might fall at her side as she fought on, _she_ was destined to fulfil her task unscathed, and reach the presence of Esca in time to save him from destruction, even though she should die the next minute at his feet.

The two first assailants who entered the Court of the Gentiles were Valeria, in her golden armour, and Hirpinus, brandishing the short deadly weapon he knew how to use so well. They were close together; but the former paused to look around, and the gladiator, rushing to the front, made for his old comrade, whom he recognised on the instant. His haste, however, nearly proved fatal. The heavily‐nailed sandals that he wore afforded but a treacherous foothold on the smooth stone pavement, his feet slipped from under him, and he came with a heavy back‐fall to the ground. _Habet!_(23) exclaimed Hippias, from the sheer force of custom, following close upon his tracks; but he strained eagerly forward to defend his prostrate comrade while he spoke, and found himself instantly engaged with a score of Jewish warriors, who came swarming back like bees to settle on the fallen gladiator. Hirpinus, however, covered his body skilfully under his shield, and defended himself bravely with his sword—dealing more than one fatal thrust at such of his assailants as were rash enough to believe him vanquished because down. As more of the gladiators came pouring in, they were opposed by troops of the Jews, who, with Eleazar at their head, made a desperate sally from the Temple to which they had retired, and a fierce hand‐to‐hand struggle, that lasted several minutes, took place round Hirpinus in the centre of the court. When he at length regained his feet, his powerful aid soon made itself felt in the fray, and the Jews, though fighting stubbornly still, were obliged once more to retreat before the increasing columns of the besiegers.

Valeria, in the meantime, rushing through the court to where she spied a well‐known form struggling in its bonds, came across the path of Eleazar, at whom she delivered a savage thrust as she met him, lest he should impede her course. The fierce Jew, who had enough on his hands at such a moment, and was pressing eagerly forward into the thickest of the struggle, was content to parry the stroke with his javelin, and launch that weapon in return at his assailant, while he passed on. The cruel missile did its errand only too well. The broad thirsty point clove through a crevice in her golden corselet, and sank deep in her white tender side, to drink the life‐blood of the woman‐warrior as she sped onward in fulfilment of her fatal task. Breaking the javelin’s shaft in her hands, and flinging the fragments from her with a scornful smile, Valeria found strength to cross the court, nor did her swift step falter, nor did her proud bearing betray wounds or weakness, till she reached Esca’s side. A loving smile of recognition, two strokes of her sharp blade, and he was free! but as the severed bonds fell from his arms, and he stretched them forth in the delight of restored liberty, his deliverer, throwing away sword and shield, seized his hand in both her own, and, pressing it convulsively to her bosom, sank down helpless on the pavement at his feet.