Great Lion of God (100 page)

But that night the healthy and robust Drusilla became gravely ill, and fell into delirium. Frightened slave girls rushed to the Procurator in the morning, as did the two family physicians, one a Greek, one an Egyptian. “Lord!” cried the Greek, “we have tended the Lady Drusilla all through the night but now she is at the point of death and we can do no more!”

Important Jews and Romans from Jerusalem were consulting with Felix this morning, and his atrium was crowded with them, and there was also two letters from Rome, sealed with Imperial seals. His scribes were at hand, busily recording the meeting, and Felix had been in the midst of a diatribe when his slaves and the Greek and Egyptian burst in upon him, without warning. They knew of his burly devotion to the Lady Drusilla, and had not sent a messenger first, imploring an interview.

He started up, his full dark eyes aghast. He cried, “I did not know she was stricken!” He forgot the impatient visitors, who were glancing meaningly at each other.

“She begged us not to disturb you in the night,” said the Greek, “and we obeyed, and then she became insensible.” The household revered Drusilla and respected her, and many loved her for her abrupt kindnesses and justice. Both physicians began to weep and wring their hands. “Only the gods can save her now,” said the Egyptian.

Felix uttered imprecations concerning the gods, and both Jew and Roman were appalled. Then the Procurator, as if throwing them off also, flung off his robes of office and ran from the atrium to the women’s quarters of his beautiful house, which had been built for Pontius Pilate by King Herod.

Drusilla’s bed chamber was hot and dim, for the velvet curtains had been drawn over the windows, and she lay sweating in her death agony on the bed, and her tangled black hair was strewn in feverish disarray over the pillows, which were silken and of many colors. She lay sprawled and heedless, her fat round body clothed only in a night garment of white linen; her thick white limbs were constantly convulsed. She breathed with a deep croaking, far down in her throat, and her enormous bosom struggled for breath, and her hands grasped and clutched at the blankets in torment. The big plain face was distorted with pain, and the black eyes stared blankly, or rolled, and her swollen tongue was thrust through her wet gray lips.

Felix fell on his knees beside the bed and tried to take one of his wife’s hands, but she tore the hot flesh from his grasp. “Drusilla!” he cried. “My beloved wife, Drusilla!” The heat in the chamber was past bearing. Despite the scent of flowers in the room there was already the sickly sweet stench of death, and Felix, who had been a soldier, recognized it at once and the bristling hair on his head rose in terror and his heart seemed to stop. He burst into tears, and beat his forehead with his clenched fists, and then he glared at his physicians and almost screamed, “If you do not save her, you will die!”

“Lord,” said the Egyptian, “I am a physician and so am a citizen of Rome. I am not a slave. The Lady Drusilla is in extremis, and we have done our best, and if that is not enough, it is the will of Ptah that she die.”

“You and your accursed gods!” howled Felix. “What do I care for your gods, or mine? They do not exist! To whom can I appeal then, but to you, you worthless swine who cannot save my wife!” He was beside himself. He swung his head back and forth on the pillows beside his wife, and then he began to groan, and he flung his arm over the tossing body of Drusilla.

“Sweetheart,” he said. “You are more to me than life, for all your tongue and your admonitions and your extravagance. You gave me no sons, but ten sons are not worth your life, Carissima. Do you not know me, your husband, Felix? Do you not love me? Will you leave me desolate? Have mercy, my beloved. Have mercy!”

It seemed to the Roman that Drusilla was not only his wife, but his mother and his daughter and, above all, his dearest friend, for did she not console him constantly and advise him wisely and with rough tenderness, and then hold him in her arms in sympathy?

Drusilla did not respond to his caresses and his words. The deep and vibrating croak in her throat and breast increased, and there was an ominous rattling. Felix, in spite of his disbelief, began to invoke Asclepius and his daughter, Hygeia, and Apollo and Mercury and Chilon, not to mention his patron, Mars, whom he loved above all the others. Around him stood the wailing slave women and the physicians. The Egyptian lifted Drusilla’s fat wrist in his fingers, then bent and listened to her heart. He whispered to the Greek, “She is dying, or is dead.” The heat in the chamber increased. Drusilla’s sweat ran from her like gray water. Her eyes opened widely, and fixed themselves on the painted ceiling, and did not blink.

Felix uttered the wildest threats and imprecations, shaking his fists, as he knelt, and promising torture and death to those about him if Drusilla was not saved. The physicians shrugged, but they were uneasy. These Romans were capable of anything, in their unseemly wrath and arrogance.

It was then that a slave woman, bowing and terrified, approached the kneeling Felix and said in a quaking voice, “Lord, there is a rabbi in Herod’s Hall, who is reputed to have raised the dead and to cure the desperately ill. Send for him at once, I implore you.”

“That superstitious and condemned Jew?” cried the Egyptian, looking about him with umbrage and with lacerated pride. He drew himself up; his thin black beard pointed in the air.

“That Nazarene!” exclaimed the Greek. “Is he not already dead?” His rounded features expressed his contempt.

But Felix was gazing at the slave woman with stretched and glittering eyes. “Send for him at once!” he shouted. “Make haste! Call the overseer of the hall!”

The slave woman fled. The physicians approached Felix with pleading and outstretched hands. “No Jewish mountebank, with incantations, can save the Lady Drusilla,” they said. “Let him not profane her deathbed. See! She is already moribund; she is drawing her last breath.”

And then indeed Drusilla gave a last loud cry, shuddered in all her parts as if a decapitating ax had struck her, convulsed all her limbs, and then collapsed on the pillows and on the bed. Her flesh immediately seemed to dwindle, to become less, as the inhabitant within had left and there was nothing remaining but a shell.

Felix uttered a howling and discordant cry, and grasped her hand and kissed it madly, and wept with meanings, like a tortured child. He writhed; he clutched; he incoherently implored all the gods he had ever known or had heard of by repute. He threatened; he gasped; it was as if he were dying, himself.

The physicians dared not even approach the deathbed, for fear of an attack on them by Felix, in his ferocious despair. They wanted to close the dead woman’s eyes, to compose her thrown limbs in a more seemly fashion, to draw the sheet over her head. But they were afraid of this mad man. The slave women began the long lamentation for the dead, kneeling about on the floor and bowing their heads. The physicians exchanged miserable glances. Only the unfortunate Drusilla was silent and motionless. A stabbing ray of hot sun struck through the aperture between the draperies, and it lay on Drusilla’s quiet and staring face, and somewhere there was the ominous buzz of marauding flies, scenting death, and the murals on the walls, of many colors, appeared to move with a life of their own, crawling silently. Felix, weeping without restraint, dropped his head beside that of his wife, and embraced her fiercely, and called to her in many endearing words as if to halt her spirit. Over and over he implored her not to leave him. Of what use was his life without her? His voice, wheedling, coaxing, became that of a little boy, cajoling his mother, a frightened and terrified voice, and the physicians dropped their eyes or looked aside, in embarrassment. Men did not implore the dead. The Roman was lesser in their eyes now, yet more terrible, for his emotions were capricious, and they thought his grief both an exaggeration and excessive.

The silken curtains were thrown aside and Saul entered with the slave woman, and instantly Felix was upon him, grasping his arms and shaking him and uttering both maledictions and pleas together. Saul laid his hand on the Roman’s shoulder and said loudly, “Let us be calm, lord. I have heard that the Lady Drusilla had been stricken in the night, and I came at once.” He put aside Felix and approached the bed and the two physicians watched him come with affronted expressions. “The Lady Drusilla has suspired,” said the Egyptian.

“I am no physician,” said Saul, and touched his forehead briefly with his hand in token of respect. He then stood and gazed down at Drusilla, whose women had arranged her limbs and covered her body and closed her eyes. Saul was saddened. He had been the recipient of many kindnesses from this lady of his Tribe and blood. She had sent delicacies from her own kitchen and dainties she had prepared herself to hearten his spirit and to let him know that he was not entirely abandoned, and she had had numerous conversations with him since her first visit and always she had listened with respect.

Now she was dead, and suddenly. He took her cooling hand in his, as if she were alive and he wished to comfort her. The heavy flesh lay in his fingers, and he opened his mouth to recite the prayers for the dead. The bereaved husband stood behind him, clutching his shoulders, but Saul did not feel the pressure.

Then Saul heard distinctly and loudly in his inner ear, “Bid the woman rise,” and he knew that beloved Voice, and his whole body trembled. He said, and all heard him, “Yes, Lord, I obey.”

His lips felt suddenly cold and numb and there were flashes of light before his eyes, and he was weakened as if his blood had drained from him to this woman. He held her hand tightly and said, and all could hear him, “Arise, Drusilla, and waken to the day, in the Name of Christ Jesus Who has power to raise from the dead!”

The physicians heard this incredulously, and they turned to each other at once, and the Greek whispered, “He is mad!” The Egyptian made a sound of both derision and disgust. But the Procurator gazed at his wife, and the slave women bent from the waist and stared at the woman on the bed, whose hand was held by this strange Jew.

Moment passed into moment, and there was a deathly silence in the chamber. Then Drusilla murmured a deep and distressful sigh and stirred a little. The physicians came at once to her bedside and their eyes widened and the Egyptian seized his beard in his hand, and the Greek turned very pale.

Then Drusilla, sighing more and more, slowly opened her eyes and her broad gray lips turned a faint rose and the fullness of her eyes lifted and they were bright and clear again. The Roman cried aloud with joy and rushed to his wife and half lifted her in his arms, but she looked only at Saul with a mournful look, and did not heed her husband’s kisses and caresses and joyful words.

“Forgive me,” said Saul. “I was bidden to recall you by One who is the wisest of the wise.”

Tears swelled into her eyes. She pushed aside her tangled black hair, then she looked at her husband and took his head in her arms and held it to her breast, like a mother. Then she gave her attention to Saul again.

“You must do as you must do,” she said, “but I would that I had not returned.”

“Yes,” said Saul, and bowed his head and grieved with her that she had been restored to the world. “But you returned, as a witness.”

The physicians brushed by him and could not believe that this woman who had been dead was now alive, and that she spoke in sturdy accents, she who had been able to utter only groans all through the night, and the Egyptian touched her brow and it was cool, and the Greek felt her pulse and it was bounding with health. Confounded, they fell back, and the Egyptian said to Saul, “She was not truly dead.”

“I am not a physician,” he repeated, and smiled faintly. “But you declared she was dead, and I have seen the dead too many times to be deceived,” and he thought of his nephew, Amos, who had died and had been restored, and how he, Saul, had said the same words that they had said. “She was restored that she might be a witness to Him Who conquered death and sin and redeemed our souls.”

“I know that I had passed the way all men must pass,” said Drusilla, “but what I saw and with whom I spoke it is forbidden for me to speak.” She leaned her plump cheek, now ruddy with health, on the top of her husband’s head and she closed her eyes and tears seeped between her short black lashes.

Saul left the chamber and none went with him and as he walked his strength returned and he was no longer trembling.

That evening, before Saul put on his prayer shawl and his phylacteries, he was visited by Felix and Drusilla, and the Roman led his wife by the hand, fearful of releasing her. But when he saw Saul he dropped the hand of his wife and fell on Saul’s neck and embraced him. He exclaimed, “Ask anything I am able to give you, Paul of Tarsus, and it shall be yours! For you brought to me my wife who is dearer to me than all other creatures and dearer than treasure!”

“I did not do it,” said Saul. “Only God can restore the dead, and He bade me raise up the Lady Drusilla as a witness to Him.”

“I will sacrifice two milk-white oxen to Him, with golden collars about their necks and gold rings in their nostrils!” cried the Roman. “I will go to the temple of Zeus to do this at dawn, for your God is greater than Zeus, and more merciful.”

“He does not desire such sacrifices,” said Saul, “but only a humble and a contrite heart. He desires only your love, lord.”

Drusilla bowed her head over her clasped hands and said to Saul, “Teach us of Him, Who is the Messias of God and became Man for our sakes.”

And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, Felix trembled— (Acts 24:25)

Chapter 53

M
ONTH
drifted into month and the seasons changed. Saul was no longer confined to his house and his garden but could walk over the small town and go down to the harbor and watch the sea and the ships. He baptized Drusilla, but Felix was another matter. He was half convinced that the physicians were correct, and that his wife had not truly died but had been unconscious. Moreover, he was a Roman and though Saul had informed him that multitudes of Romans were now Christians Felix could not bring himself to accept their faith. He felt that in some way it would be an insult to Rome and his soldierly forebears who had honored the old gods. And he was hearing more and more turbulent stories of the Christians, which angered him. He did not wish to issue edicts and punishments against them, as Ananias urged in numerous letters, for he did not desire to offend Saul and sadden him. He came often to hear Saul converse of the Messias but faith did not touch his skeptical soul. He had a rational explanation for everything and did not refrain from advancing those explanations. Sometimes he wondered why Saul—if he did indeed possess miraculous powers—did not grow white pinions and rise into the heavens and be free, and far away from Caesarea and his enemies, instead of remaining as a prisoner waiting judgment from Rome.