The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  Basil could chart the rise in her spirits by the fall of his own. He grew less buoyant as time flitted by and more disposed to look on the dark side of things.

  At the end of the day an elaborate supper would be served and the young wife always tried to make an occasion of it. She dressed herself carefully. Her spirits then reached a peak; she laughed easily and recounted with animation the events of the day. Basil would listen in a mood of mild melancholy. “And now it is you,” she would say, “who look as though the end of the world is near at hand.”

  Basil was to sail for Ephesus on a vessel that left at dawn. It had been Deborra’s hope that they could have their last meal alone together, but she came to realize that this would be selfish. She prepared a very special supper, therefore, and had Luke, Prince P’ing-li, and Chimham sit down with him. She contented herself, as a good wife should, with seeing that they were served tender slices of the roast young kid, that the bread was crisp and hot from the oven and the wine well cooled. The same food was being sent up to Elidad and Irijah at their posts above, and once she went to visit them and make sure they had everything they desired, pausing to sit for a few minutes beside them and talk of their homes and families.

  As she moved about her tasks she caught scraps of the conversation at the table where the head of the household sat with his guests. P’ing-li, as usual, was plying Luke with questions about the life and teachings of Jesus. Basil was in a silent mood. He was eating little and seemed to be taking small interest in his guests. Chimham, who had secured the consent of the old prince to follow the train of the latter into the East, was in an exultant frame of mind and ate and drank a great deal.

  Once, when the talk had died down momentarily, Chimham began to talk about himself, declaring that he was a failure as a husband. “When I supped for the first time with my new wife,” he declared over the rim of his wine cup, “we were very close and affectionate. We ate from the same dish and used the same spoon, turn and turn about. But before we were through she came around to the question of presents. What would I bring her from the East? I should have given her the rough of my hand there and then. It is the only safe present for a begging wife.” He indulged in a gusty sigh. “Yes, I am a failure. It has always been this way. I have never given any of them the rough of my hand. When I married the first of them—I am not sure at this moment which was the first—I should have whittled a stick and made the surface hard and smooth, and I should have placed it inside the door of my house. I should have said to her, this first wife: ‘Observe! This is a stick. It is a heavy stick. If you displeasure me, I shall beat you well on your full-of-the-moon.’ ” He sighed again. “By the earth and my head, that is what I shall do when I marry my next wife.”

  Basil kept his eyes on Deborra as she moved about her tasks. She had not allowed Sarah to cover her head with a sakkos, and so the dark curls clustering about her brow made her look very young and a little gay and impudent. Her dress was the color of an unripe peach and very simple in line, and for the first time since her grandfather’s death she was wearing jewelry. There was a heavy gold chain wound half a dozen times or more around her neck and a ring on her left hand with an emerald as large as a camel’s eye.

  The sky began to darken with the coming of night. Deborra seated herself at a small table under the arched walk that surrounded the court, and a servant brought out a lighted lamp and placed it beside her. The Egyptian cat, attracted by the light, emerged from some high perch and rubbed against her ankles. She reached down a hand and smoothed his ears. “You might really get to be fond of me,” she said, “if you were willing to try.”

  The analogy this suggested caused her to look at the table where Basil sat with his guests. His eyes met hers and, sensing an invitation, he rose to his feet and crossed the court. He seated himself on the opposite side of the table from her.

  “You seem low in spirits,” said Deborra. “I expected you to be happy tonight. You are setting out to finish the Chalice. While you are away you may find the evidence to use in ousting that wicked man. Your going, then, should not be an occasion for the drawing of a long face.”

  “I am happy that the time has come to set out on my travels, and yet I am also sad at the need to go,” he said. It was so dark now that the lamp did not make it possible for either to read what was written on the face of the other. He began to speak of something that had been in his mind. “I cannot understand why things have been so easy. I expected trouble from several sources. In fact, I was reconciled to postponing my journey until we had settled some of the problems hanging over us. But everyone seems to have left us alone.”

  Deborra responded with a grave nod. “Yes, we have been most fortunate.”

  “I suspect it has been a lull. I shall hurry back in expectation of the breaking of the storm about us.” He checked himself abruptly. “It may be that you do not want me to return.”

  She said “Basil!” in a tone that suggested reproach. Then she fell into a thoughtful mood, and it was some moments before she began to speak of what she was thinking. “I want you to return. I would be—yes, I must say it—I would be quite unhappy if you did not. But it depends on so many things, doesn’t it? On whether you want to return. And on whether we can get some matters settled between us.”

  “It must be as clear to you as it is to me,” he said in a low tone, “that we cannot go on as we are doing.”

  “No,” she answered. “That is true. It was agreed between us at the start that our marriage would be on the terms I had suggested. I want to say now that you have been very kind, Basil. You have kept to the terms with—with the greatest strictness.”

  “I knew it was your wish.”

  “Yes, it was my wish. I cannot find fault with anything you have said or done. And now that you are going away, I want to thank you for being so fair always, and so very kind.”

  “If there is to be any change, it must be in accordance with your wishes.”

  She cried out vehemently: “No, no! What we are to do with our lives depends entirely on you. On what you have to tell me when you come back. Basil, don’t you see that—that from this moment on I cannot speak another word? That I must wait for you to say whatever is to be said?”

  He reached a hand across the table in the dark and touched hers. “I have been on the defensive and have not felt free to speak. But now I can see that I have been lacking in understanding,” he said. After a moment of silence he rose to his feet. “Let us stroll in the garden while we finish our talk. Do you realize as much as I do that we owe something to these friends who are so deeply concerned about us?”

  “Yes, I know that we do.”

  She rose in turn and walked slowly out into the garden with him, a hand on his arm. They might have been a devoted pair of lovers, because her dark head was a scant inch from his white linen sleeve; but this explanation was too good to be true to the trio watching them at the supper table.

  “They wonder what is going to happen to us,” said Basil. “The prince has spoken of it several times.”

  “He has also spoken to me,” said Deborra. “I have become very fond of him, even if he is such a funny little man. He giggled so delightedly when he told me about the presents he is leaving. I can hardly wait to know what they are.” It was a good thing that the darkness hid her face, because it flamed with color when she realized what she had said. In an effort to cover up the slip of her tongue she hurried on: “He leaves in a few days. I shall miss him very much. It is going to be quiet here.”

  They had reached a spot where it was possible to see the moon rising over the upper portions of the house, and they stood in silence for several moments watching it. Their minds were so filled with what the future might hold for them that the old prince was for a moment banished completely from their thoughts.

  “Basil,” said Deborra, “I exacted a promise of you. That you would not see Helena when you were in Rome. Now I withdraw it. I want you to promise that you will see her.”

>   Basil was taken by surprise. He frowned in the darkness, wondering what reason she could have for changing her mind. “I intended to abide by the promise I made you,” he said. “There is no desire on my part to see her.”

  Deborra spoke slowly. “I think it would be a wise thing to do. Don’t ask me for my reasons. I am not sure I could explain. Perhaps this one reason will be enough; that it might be helpful to both of us later—when it comes to deciding what we are to do.”

  He hesitated and then said, “It shall be as you wish.”

  It came to Basil suddenly that everything that now counted in life could be found here: peace and the chance for great love, his friends seated about his table, the Chalice in the room above, his workbench and tools, the belief that he shared with those who meant the most, Deborra and Luke, and that filled all their minds with a clear white light, the girl by his side who was becoming again infinitely precious to him. It was Deborra, he knew, who counted most of all. He said to himself: “Her eyes are brighter than I thought Helena’s to be. Her hair is softer and more lustrous. She is very young and sweet and desirable.”

  Aloud he said: “There will be many ships sailing for Ephesus. I could take a later one.”

  “Yes, Basil,” she said breathlessly. Then she summoned the resolution to add: “I want you to stay. I do! It would make me very happy. But it is so important to finish the Chalice. It is a sacred duty.”

  His arm went about her. He drew her closer. It might have been counted a minor miracle that in the darkness his lips found hers unerringly, except that her willingness had been such a great help. For a moment she clung to him, standing eagerly on tiptoe. Then with a deep sigh she drew away.

  “The prince will be glad,” she whispered. “Was it for his sake that you kissed me?”

  “I did not give him a thought,” declared Basil.

  There was a pause, and then she began to whisper again. “I will be less unhappy now to see you go. But, Basil, we must face it. It is your duty to go, and mine to let you. You must see her, as you promised, when you get to Rome. This I am going to ask of you: see her with new eyes. Only if you can forget her completely, after seeing her, will it be possible for us to plan a different kind of life to share.”

  BOOK THREE

  CHAPTER XXIII

  1

  RAGUEL, the dyer, said: “You desire to see John, son of Zebedee? John, the disciple beloved of Jesus?” He read again the letter Luke had given Basil, but his manner did not lose the edge of suspicion it had taken on at the first mention of the latter’s errand. “Do you not know, youth, that you might as well expect to look into the sky and see the face of Jehovah?”

  Raguel was a man of substance. He had a large establishment: large, at least, for the section where it was located, at the fringe of the Greek portion of Ephesus. It was all in one room: an elevated space where the family lived and that reflected the cheerful red of earthenware and the rich tones of brass and bronze, and even the luxury of a carpet from the desert, and a lower section where the domestic animals were kept. There was, however, a second building, connected with the house by a latticed passage. Here the vats were kept and no fewer than three assistants worked with their arms in highly colored juices.

  “John,” he went on to say, “is a fugitive in the sense that the authorities would like to get their hands on him; to put him out of the way or exile him to one of the prison islands. The Asiarchs do not love him at all. He has taken to preaching the end of the world. He tells the people of death and fire and destruction, and so they fear him. They think, these poor, blind oxen, that if they can destroy the one who preaches danger they will destroy the danger itself. So John must remain in seclusion. It is not wise to trust strangers who come seeking him out.”

  “But is not this letter sufficient proof of my purpose?”

  “Far from it,” declared Raguel bluntly. “Luke is a kindly man. He sees the good and he has a blind eye for evil. It is not in his nature to scent treachery. And, moreover, he has no conception of the difficulties we have in keeping John out of the clutches of the Asiarchs.” He stared at Basil with the bold eyes that hinted at a nomadic strain in him. “What is this Chalice that is mentioned in the letter?”

  Basil explained briefly, but it was apparent from the first word that Raguel’s mind had been made up. The latter frowned at the end of the brief recital.

  “Simon the Magician was here last week,” he stated. “He was so diabolically clever that many people went away convinced the miracles wrought by the Son of God were no more than tricks. He caused tongues of fire to appear above the heads of his assistants. He scoffed and railed at the truth. But that was not all. There was a man in his train who came from Jerusalem and was named Loddeus. This Loddeus mingled with the people and told them, among other things, that the Cup Jesus blessed at the Last Supper and passed to His disciples is no longer in existence.”

  “I have seen it!” cried Basil. “I have seen it four times. I was present when Joseph of Arimathea produced it first from the hiding place and showed it to Paul and Luke. I saw them go down on their knees, with tears in their eyes, and kiss the rim of the little Cup. I know where it is today.”

  “Listen to what Loddeus told.” Raguel’s manner still showed no signs of relenting. “He swears that the Zealots took it away from the Christians in Jerusalem and carried it to the High Priest. Ananias had a servant bring in a hammer and pound it into dust. Then he himself, unwilling to trust the task to other hands, went in his ceremonial robes to the shore of the Dead Sea where the holy river flows into it. It was in the early morning, and he waited until the ridge of white foam appeared at the mouth of the river and then into it he tossed the dust of the Cup. It was carried away on that strange wave and so found its way to the bottom and was lost in the salt of the sea. Then he raised an arm and cried out, ‘Never more shall this reminder of unrest rise up to plague us!’ Loddeus said that many people witnessed the ceremony and that he was there himself.”

  “It is a pack of falsehoods!”

  Raguel gestured with both hands. “People are accepting it as the truth. And so when a beardless boy comes and says that the Cup was not destroyed, are we to believe him? Are we to accept him on faith and let him know our most closely held secret, the whereabouts of John?”

  At first Basil had nothing to propose for the unraveling of this unforeseen difficulty. If the letter from Luke did not suffice, what more could he do? Finally, however, he said to the dyer: “It may be I could convince you by telling the whole story; how I came to be in the household of Joseph of Arimathea, and everything that has transpired since. It is a long story.”

  Raguel was dressed in a purple robe to anticipate the stains that his garments were certain to suffer in the course of his work. His neck and arms and ankles were discolored with splotches of this shade. He dried his hands on the skirt and then held the letter up to his eyes for a final appraisal.

  “I go on an errand on the Lord’s Day,” he said finally. “It will mean a seven-mile walk and the same distance back. If you care to go with me, there will be time for the telling of this story.” He gave his head a warning shake. “It will be a hot and dusty walk. It leads into one of the most desolate spots on the face of the earth. Think twice before you decide to accompany me.”

  Basil felt his heart sink at the need to face once more the malice of his great enemy, the sun, but he did not hesitate in answering. “Have I come all the way to Ephesus to see John, only to be sent away without an effort? I will go with you. I am sure the story I have to tell will banish from your mind the lies this Loddeus is spreading.”

  Raguel let his eyes range to the raised portion of the room where a plump woman with warm brown eyes was working among the cooking utensils. She nodded her head to him and he smiled and nodded back. “You will stay with us. My Elisheba is a good provider and she will not mind another mouth to fill because my assistants have their meals with us anyway. We will start at dawn. Maran-atha! It will be a h
ard walk!”

  2

  Segub, who was called the Zebra, emerged from the dyeing room, where he and the other assistants slept on rolls of bedding behind the vats. His nickname rose out of his unwillingness to wash the dye stains from his person. His neck was red, his chest purple, his bony ankles a weak blue. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes with a slow hand.

  “It will be hot,” he said, staring into the east. “Jehovah have pity on all flint-heads like my master who will walk to the mines this day.”

  “If you were a good Christian,” said Raguel, “you would be going with us.”

  “I am a good Christian,” retorted Segub. “I believe in the words of Paul, who said to us, ‘The Lord’s Day is made for man, not man for the Lord’s Day.’ I shall pass the hours in the shade of a tree and I shall think of you, master, toiling over the sands to those thrice-accursed mines.”

  Raguel began the long walk with a pucker between his eyes. “I was converted to the teachings of Jesus seven years ago,” he said. “Do you see what that means? All my life I have lived under the Laws, and I am now too old to change. Many Christians disregard the strictest of the Laws. They lean on the utterances of Paul and say, ‘Is it not true that Paul says this or that?’ They are becoming very lax. But I—I cannot change my ways.” He sighed deeply. “Have you noticed any difference in me?”

  Basil saw now that his cheeks looked sunken and that new lines had sprouted around his mouth.

  “I lack teeth,” explained the master dyer, “and on the Lord’s Day I dare not use the substitutes that have been made for me. Why, do you ask? Because when they fall out—as they do a dozen times a day—I could not put them back in; that would be work, and all work is forbidden. Nor could I carry them, because that also would be work.”