And up from the south into the great forests came the Romans, fighting men all, who pressed us back upon the Huns.  It was a crushage of the peoples for lack of room; and we taught the Romans what fighting was, although in truth we were no less well taught by them.

But always I remembered the sun of the south-land that I had glimpsed in the ships of Agard, and it was my fate, caught in this south drift of the Teutons, to be captured by the Romans and be brought back to the sea which I had not seen since I was lost away from the East Angles.  I was made a sweep-slave in the galleys, and it was as a sweep-slave that at last I came to Rome.

All the story is too long of how I became a freeman, a citizen, and a soldier, and of how, when I was thirty, I journeyed to Alexandria, and from Alexandria to Jerusalem.  Yet what I have told from the time when I was baptized in the mead-pot of Tostig Lodbrog I have been compelled to tell in order that you may understand what manner of man rode in through the Jaffa Gate and drew all eyes upon him.

Well might they look.  They were small breeds, lighter-boned and lighter-thewed, these Romans and Jews, and a blonde like me they had never gazed upon.  All along the narrow streets they gave before me but stood to stare wide-eyed at this yellow man from the north, or from God knew where so far as they knew aught of the matter.

Practically all Pilate’s troops were auxiliaries, save for a handful of Romans about the palace and the twenty Romans who rode with me.  Often enough have I found the auxiliaries good soldiers, but never so steadily dependable as the Romans.  In truth they were better fighting men the year round than were we men of the North, who fought in great moods and sulked in great moods.  The Roman was invariably steady and dependable.

There was a woman from the court of Antipas, who was a friend of Pilate’s wife and whom I met at Pilate’s the night of my arrival.  I shall call her Miriam, for Miriam was the name I loved her by.  If it were merely difficult to describe the charm of women, I would describe Miriam.  But how describe emotion in words?  The charm of woman is wordless.  It is different from perception that culminates in reason, for it arises in sensation and culminates in emotion, which, be it admitted, is nothing else than super-sensation.

In general, any woman has fundamental charm for any man.  When this charm becomes particular, then we call it love.  Miriam had this particular charm for me.  Verily I was co-partner in her charm.  Half of it was my own man’s life in me that leapt and met her wide-armed and made in me all that she was desirable plus all my desire of her.

Miriam was a grand woman.  I use the term advisedly.  She was fine-bodied, commanding, over and above the average Jewish woman in stature and in line.  She was an aristocrat in social caste; she was an aristocrat by nature.  All her ways were large ways, generous ways.  She had brain, she had wit, and, above all, she had womanliness.  As you shall see, it was her womanliness that betrayed her and me in they end.  Brunette, olive-skinned, oval-faced, her hair was blue-black with its blackness and her eyes were twin wells of black.  Never were more pronounced types of blonde and brunette in man and woman met than in us.