Chapter 4

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ said John kindly, ‘but perhaps it might help—if you confided in someone you could trust.’

‘I am on my way to find my father,’ said Fara. ‘He lives in Galilee—at the city of Tiberias.’

‘Then he must be in the employ of the Tetrarch,’ surmised John. ‘There is little else in Tiberias but the great establishment of Antipas.’

Fara nodded and turned her eyes away. Tardily and in a barely audible, reluctant voice she said, ‘Antipas is my father.’

John seemed a person not easily surprised, but he impulsively rose to his feet and exclaimed, ‘You don’t mean it!’ He searched her face, and apparently satisfied that she was telling the truth, he said, ‘Of course I know the story. Everyone does. You have no cause to be proud of your father.’

‘I am quite aware of that, sir,’ agreed Fara.

‘But—surely—after the cruel and shameful treatment he gave the Princess of Arabia, you are not going to Tiberias to live with this—’

‘I have vowed to avenge my mother,’ interrupted Fara huskily.

‘You mean—you would kill your father?’

‘If I can.’

‘But you can’t!’ exclaimed John. ‘In the first place, it’s quite impossible. The place is fortified like a besieged city. I was born a Galilean, and my friends have told me that the Tetrarch lives like a fugitive, heavily guarded by night and day. You would only lose your life to no purpose at all. And—even if you succeeded, which is inconceivable, your crime would haunt you all your days. No good ever comes of revenge.’

‘I heard you say yesterday that there was One arriving now to avenge God,’ said Fara. ‘Is no good to come of that?’

John did not have an answer ready. After some delay, he said, ‘That is a far different matter, my daughter. Vengeance is permitted only to God. He will repay!’

‘But I mustn’t!’ Fara’s tone was satirical. ‘It’s all right for God to seek vengeance—but it is wrong for me to do it. I’m supposed to have a finer moral character?’

‘That remark,’ reproved John, ‘does you small credit, daughter. It is irreverent.’

‘But practical,’ defended Fara.

‘And excusable, I suppose,’ reflected John. ‘You probably had no religious training—in Arabia.’

‘Why not?’ Fara demanded. ‘The Jews and Arabians worship the same God, do we not? Abraham is our common father; is that not so?’

Any further discussion of this matter seeming fraught with more heat than light, John nodded absently.