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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Lest they go on without us," he added. Momus turned suddenly and gazed at Aquila. Then he imperiously signed the pagan to fall back. They rode on. The pagan slackened his horse's gallop and reined in beside the woman. They talked together, argumentatively, for a single tense minute and then Aquila, with a bitter word, put spurs to his animal and dashed up beside Laodice's camel.
For a short space the three did not speak, though Laodice's lips parted and she stroked her forehead in a bewildered way. Then Salome, late actress in the theaters at Ephesus, came into the hall. Amaryllis bowed to her and the impostor gave her a chair. He turned to Laodice and with the faintest shadow of a grimace motioned toward the new-comer.
Keturah, Laodice's handmaiden, had fainted with terror and was carried parcel-wise over the great arm of Momus, the mute, out into the street and deposited summarily on the floor of Laodice's bamboo howdah. The camel-driver, Hiram, seemed only a little less stupefied than she.
All night the camels fled east, all night the soft footfall of the woman's beast pursued them; all night the wind freshened until Laodice's bared face stiffened with the cold and the breath of the mute that sat upon her camel's neck steamed in the moonlight.
The shepherd made a little sign and bent his knee. "The Christ!" he responded. Momus plucked quickly at Laodice's sleeve and shook his head at her in an admonitory manner. He had laid down his bread unfinished. But the shepherd looked at him sympathetically. "Never fear," he said. "It will not hurt her to hear about Him. He makes Pella safe from armies. Let her come there and see for herself."
Meanwhile, Keturah, who sat huddled on the floor of Laodice's howdah, had not moved since they had left the doorway of Costobarus' house. Momus, on the neck of Laodice's camel, had observed her once or twice, and now he reached back and touched her. He jerked his hand away and brought up his camel with a wrench.
Let that be parentage, history, ambition and religion for her. She, too, seeks diversion in Jerusalem, and is my guest for a while." The Gischalan took Laodice's hand and held it. "Welcome, thou," he said. "I will tolerate another man under thy roof if thou wilt but make this pretty bird of passage a permanency," he said to the Greek, after a silent study of Laodice's beauty.
"John hath taken him a new woman to keep him cheerful this hour. I was not daring enough. Philadelphus' wife hath supplanted me. Your place with him is vacant. Go back and possess it!" "Why was appetite and desire and thirst of power and the love of riches lighted in you, but to be satisfied?" The prophetess' words swept in after Laodice's sudden fear of returning to Philadelphus.
The insult in his speech overwhelmed her and after a moment's lingering for words to express her rage, she turned and fled back to her room and barred her door upon him. After sunset the lights leaped up in the hall of Amaryllis the Greek. Presently there came a knock at Laodice's door. The girl, fearing that Philadelphus stood without, sat still and made no answer.
Whatever her conclusion she added no more to the discussion of Laodice's hopes. "Are you expectant?" she asked. "I see the need of a Messiah," he responded. "Doubtless. You and Simon do not unite the city; nothing but an united, confident and supremely capable people can resist Rome in even this most majestic fortification in the world unless miracle be performed, indeed."
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