The twilight of the cavern rarely revealed enough of the features of
her fellows to Laodice for her to identify them or for them to
identify her. She lived among them a dusky shadow among shadows. And
because of her fear that Philadelphus might be searching for her, she
stayed in the sunless crypt day by day until the Maccabee, noting with
affectionate distress that she was growing white and weak, bade her
take one of the women and venture up to the light.
There were, besides the women, two men who took no part in the
preparation for war which went on about them in the cavern day and
night. While weapons and armor were made and tramping ranks formed and
broke before the commands of the lithe dark commander of that fortress
and subdued but fierce councils took place around torches--while all
this went on, they kept back, even apart from the women, and said
nothing.
Laodice saw that they were physically unfit; that one was very old and
the other very feeble and her heart warmed again to that stern master
who saw them fed as abundantly as his most valued men. These, then,
were those Christians whom he had taken into his protection because of
the Name which had inspired a shepherd boy to save his life.
When he commanded Laodice to go up into the sunlight, he approached
the corner in which the two useless men hid and bade them, too, to go
up into the air.
"Let us have no sickness in this place," he said bluntly and turned on
his heel and left them to obey.
Laodice took one of the older women and timidly climbing the steps
from which the rubbish had been pushed away by the climbing hundreds,
went through the dusk of the passage that terminated in a brilliancy
that dazzled her. And as she walked she heard the footsteps of the two
men behind her.
Up in the chaos of fallen columns, she stood a moment with her hands
pressed over her eyes. Only little by little was she able to permit
the full blaze of the Judean sun to reach them. The uproar on
Jerusalem after the muffled silence of the underground cavern filled
her with terror, and she pressed close to the shelter of the entrance
until the woman at her side reassured her.
"It is nothing," the woman said, with a dreary patience. "It is as it
was yesterday. I come here every day. I know."
After a while Laodice looked about her. The entrance to their refuge
was about the middle of the ruin and therefore a great many paces back
from the streets, so that she did not see Jerusalem's agonies face to
face. But she saw enough to make her cold and to turn her shivering
and panic-stricken into the darkness of the crypt below.