Marsyas relinquished his thought on Agrippa to turn painfully to his own story.
"I am Marsyas, son of Matthew, of Nazareth. He was a zealot who fought beside Judas of Galilee. I was born after his death, and at my birth my mother died, and being the last of their line, I am, and have been all my life alone. I was taken in mine infancy by the Essenic master of the school in Nazareth and reared to be an Essene. But I developed a certain aptness for learning and in later youth a certain aptness for teaching, and my master by the consent of the order, whose ward I was, designed me for the scholar-class of Essenes, which do not reside in En-Gadi but without in the world. The vows of the order were not laid upon me; they are reserved for the sober and understanding years when my instruction should be completed."
Agrippa frowned. "Art thou not a member of the brotherhood, then?" he asked.
The Herod ran his fingers though his hair, and Marsyas went on.
"I had two friends, both older than I. One was Saul of Tarsus; one, Stephen of Galilee. Neither knew the other. Stephen was born an Hellenist, and until the coming of his Prophet, a good Jew. But when Jesus arose in Nazareth, Stephen followed Him, and, after the Nazarene was put away, he remained here in Jerusalem. When I came hither to complete mine instruction in the college, I found the synagogue aroused against him.
"Chief among the zealous in behalf of the Law is Saul of Tarsus. Him I most feared, when the rumors of Stephen's apostasy spread abroad. An evil messenger finally set Saul upon Stephen, and I pleaded with him to spare Stephen, until I could win him back to the faith. But Saul would not hear me.
"I meant to give over mine ambition to become a scholar and take Stephen into the refuge of En-Gadi--"
He stopped for control and continued presently with difficulty.
"But when I returned from Nazareth, whither I had gone to get my patrimony which the Essene master held in ward, his enemies stoned him before mine eyes!"
Stephen's death and not his own peril was the climax of his story and he ceased because his heart began to shrink under its pain.
"And this Saul of Tarsus, whom I heard you threaten over in Bezetha, mistaking your natural grief and hunger for vengeance as signs of apostasy, would stone you also," Agrippa remarked, filling in the rest of the narrative from surmise. Marsyas assented; it hurt him as much to think on Saul as it did to remember that Stephen was dead.
