The Relic: A Novel

Three

97 Three I must have lain asleep two hours stretched dully on my bed, when I seemed to behold a tremulous light like that of a smoking torch entering the tent, and through it a voice called to me in a melancholy tone of lamentation: Teodorico , Teodorico, rise and go to Jerusalem. I threw aside the blanket in fear and beheld the most learned Topsius: in the dim light of a candle which flickered from a table on which stood the bottles of champagne, he was rapidly fastening on his foot an ancient iron spur. It was he who had awakened me eagerly, fervently: Up,Teodorico , up! The mares are saddled. Tomorrow is Easter Day, and at dawn we must be at the gates of Jerusalem. Smoothing back my hair, I considered with astonishment the prudent sensible Doctor: “O Topsius, are we to start in this abrupt way without our saddlebags and leaving our tents plunged in sleep as men who flee in fear?” The learned man raised his gold glasses which shone with an unusual irresistible intelligence. A white cloak which I had never seen him wear wrapped his learned thinness in the grave austere folds of a Latin toga, and slowly, silently opening his arms, he said (and his lips seemed molded in the classic marble): “Dom Raposo, this dawn about to appear and to touch the peaks of Hebron, is that of the fifteenth day of the month of Nizzam, and in all the history of Israel, from the time when the tribes returned from Babylonia to the day when Titus shall come and besiege the Temple for the last time, there has not been a more interesting day. I must be in Jerusalem to see this page of the Gospel living and sounding before my eyes. Let us therefore go and keep Easter in the house of Gamaliel, who is a friend of Hillel and mine, with a knowledge of Greek letters, a strong patriot and member of the Sanhedrin. It was he who said: In order to escape from the torture of doubt, impose upon yourself an authority. So up with you, Dom Raposo.” E ç a d e Q u e i r ó s 98 Thus murmured my friend, tall and motionless. And I obediently, as at a divine command, began in silence to put on my great ridingboots . As soon as I had wrapped a cloak round me, he pushed me impatiently out of the tent without even allowing me to take my watch and Sevillian knife which I kept cautiously every night under my pillow. The light of the candle was dying down, red and smoky. It must have been midnight. Two dogs were barking in the distance dully as from between the leafy walls of a garden. The soft desert air was scented with garden roses and orange flower. The sky of Israel gleamed with unusual splendor, and above Mount Nebo a beautiful white star of a divine radiance was looking towards me, twinkling eagerly, as though, impotent in its dumbness, it strove to convey some secret to my soul. The mares were waiting, motionless under their long manes. I mounted, and as Topsius was with difficulty arranging his stirrups , I saw in the direction of the fountain a marvelous sight which filled me with surpassing dread. The white wall of a new-built city seemed to rise beneath the diamond glitter of the stars of Syria. The fronts of temples gleamed palely from the depths of sacred woods, and the slender arches of an aqueduct stalked away to the distant hills. A flame smoked on the top of a tower, and moving below it shone the tips of spears; the slow sound of a bugle died away in the shadow; and sheltered against the bastions of the city wall a village slept among palm-trees. Topsius, in the saddle, ready to start, plunged his hand in the mane of his mare. That whiteness yonder? I murmured with emotion . He answered with a single word: Jericho. He set off at a gallop. I know not how long I followed in silence the noble historian of the Herods, along a straight road made of great blocks of basalt. Ah, how different from the rough way by which we had come down to Canaan, that gleaming lime-colored way through the hills where the sparse whin seemed in the moonlight a mold produced by old age and neglect! And everything round me seemed also...