So with his house yet ringing with the first convulsion of terror
Costobarus ordered his party with all haste to the camels.
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. The
mute, with a face as determined and threatening as an uplifted gad,
drove him from the shelter of a dark corner out to his place on the
neck of his master's camel. Aquila, the emissary, showed the
immemorial composure in the face of disaster that was the badge of the
Roman in the days of the degenerate Caesars, and, mounting his horse
when the rest of the party were in their places, headed the procession
toward the northeast.
From an upper window behind a lattice, Hannah cried her farewells and
fluttered her scarf. She was smiling the drawn, white smile of a
mother who is forcing herself to be cheerful in the face of danger,
for the peace of those she loves. Laodice understood the tender
deception and when a sharp turn of the street cut off the sight of the
plumy trees of the garden, she covered her face and wept inconsolably.
On either side of the passage there came muffled sounds from houses;
out of open alleys leading into interior courts stole the fetor of
death that even the spice of burning unguents could not smother.
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