The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  Ignatius had not been aware of Basil’s arrival. He turned at once with a smile and motioned the boy to approach closer. Basil knew that this was his first great test. The lady in gold and white was studying him closely, and he realized that his chance for a happy life in this amazing household would depend on whether or not she liked him. He took a quick second glance in her direction and decided that it would be an easy matter to like her. She was slender, and this made a great impression on him, for he was accustomed to maternal outlines that bulged and sagged. She was gentle in manner and speech, and he was accustomed to shrillness and the heavy impact of callused hands.

  The instinct bred in him by conditions in the Ward told him to face them boldly and speak with small respect. A still deeper instinct whispered to him that this would be wrong, that he must be quiet and respectful and have little to say for himself. Obeying this second prompting, he remained where he was, his head lowered, his feet shuffling nervously.

  “Don’t be afraid of us,” said the lady. Her voice was kind. “Come closer so I may see you better.”

  Fighting down a desire to turn and run away, Basil moved forward on leaden feet. It became apparent at once, however, that he had passed muster, because the slender lady nodded her head and said to him, “I think you will make a nice son.” Then she turned to the swarthy Ignatius. “You have chosen well.”

  The square countenance of the merchant lighted up immediately. He motioned Basil to take the couch on his other side.

  “We are in great luck tonight, you and I, my son,” he said. “I did not expect you to be approved so quickly. Your new mother is not easy to please. It took me two years to win her favor. You have done it in two minutes.”

  Basil had been accustomed to squatting on the floor and eating without ceremony and he was self-conscious when he found he was expected to stretch himself out on the couch and partake of the meal in a reclining position. The fare was so abundant and good, however, that the feeling of strangeness passed away. It was a matter of astonishment that the thick slices of cold mutton did not have to be counted or divided and that he could eat his fill of ripe dates and rich honey cakes. The wine, cooled in a deep jug in ice, was pure delight, and he swallowed it slowly. He watched his new mother and copied her manners, thereby saving himself from many mistakes.

  After the meal a young Roman summoned the head of the household to a consultation with some visitors. Basil knew he was Roman because his manner was brisk and his tongue soft and drawling in its use of Koine. The merchant rose to his feet reluctantly and said, “Verily, Quintus Annius, I am the only slave in this establishment and you are my taskmaster.”

  “I don’t believe your Quintus Annius ever eats or sleeps,” said the lady Persis in an indifferent tone. “He is such a busy young man!”

  The sky was now sprinkled with stars, and Basil found himself curious as to how the world would look at night from such a height. He looked at the lady Persis, who had partaken of supper substantially and was now showing signs of drowsiness, and asked in a respectful voice, “Is it permitted that I look over the parapet?”

  She sat up at once and dabbed her eyes with perfumed water that a slave girl brought her in a jeweled glass. “Be careful, then,” she said, straining to see him with shortsighted eyes. “We are so high from the ground that I never dare look over because of dizziness.”

  Basil, who had played games of hide-and-seek across the flat roofs of the poor section, leaping from house to house, saw no risk in surveying the world from the vantage point of his new home. The artistic soul of the boy responded at once to the magic spectacle of Antioch after the coming of darkness. All the families in this privileged section spent the evenings on their rooftops. He could see they were supping in much the same lavishness by lighted lamps that winked at him like fireflies. The profile of a lady with a beautiful Grecian nose and a nimbus of fluffy black hair swung directly into his line of vision from the next house as she moved her position, then vanished into the shadows, although he could still see her fingers toying with a bunch of grapes. On the roof beyond this a man was singing and accompanying himself on a cithara, a professional entertainer without a doubt, for his voice was sure and well trained. A slight breeze had sprung up, bringing to the boy the most delightful scents from the gardens below. He looked up at the sky and was sure that the stars were larger and brighter here than anywhere else.

  Then he thought of the stifling heat in which his parents and his two brothers would be existing, and all sense of well-being left him. He was particularly concerned about his father. “I am sure he is sad,” he thought, “because I am no longer there.”

  The slaves were removing the food and he became aware that one of them, a girl a year or two older than himself, was very attractive. She was watching him covertly, her eyes always turning in his direction as she moved about her tasks. Once, when Castor’s back was turned, she gave him a smile. He allowed his mouth to twitch in response. Encouraged by this, she sauntered close enough to the parapet to address him in a whisper.

  “Castor would whip me if he caught me speaking to you. But I don’t care. He has whipped me many times and I scratch him and kick him in the shins. He is a beast.”

  A few minutes later, having accomplished so much without being detected, the girl sauntered close to him again, moving with a sinuous swing of her slender hips. She whispered with a catch of breath that came close to being a giggle, “I think you are a pretty boy.”

  This time she did not escape detection. The lady Persis raised herself from her couch and said in a sharp voice: “Attend to your duties, girl! Do you want me to report you to Castor for insolence?”

  The girl disappeared in a great hurry at that, and the lady of the house called Basil to her and talked to him about the attitude he must adopt toward the slaves. He must never be familiar with them, particularly with the girls, of whom there were nearly a dozen. “Never lay a hand on any of them,” she admonished. “It always leads to trouble. As for this one, she is an impudent slut. She was traded to us in redemption of a debt, and I am certain we made a mistake in taking her. Never speak to her or she will presume on it.”

  During the next few days, which were so exciting and full of surprises that he had no time to be homesick, Basil was always aware of this forward member of the household staff. Her name was Helena, and her sloe black eyes gave her an illusion of beauty. She never spoke to him, but he knew that she continued as aware of his presence as he was of hers and that only the fear of Castor’s long black whip kept her from attempting more familiarities.

  Then he missed her. For several weeks she was not in evidence; and finally he was told by Cassandra, a coal-black slave who did nothing but tend to the clothes of the lady Persis, that the girl had been sent to the “housing,” which meant, he knew, that she was working in the warehouses. Sometimes slaves were sent to the housing and came back later in a subdued mood, in which case it was said they had been tamed. When Helena returned a full month later, Basil got up his courage to ask Castor about it. Had she—had she been tamed?

  “Tamed?” Castor snarled with his whole face, his oily black whiskers curling upward under his nose. “Not that one. Nothing can tame her.”

  Basil’s room was on the floor beneath the rooftop, a lofty and cool apartment with a sunken bath in one corner and with a couch that was beautiful to see but deceptively hard beneath its fancy coverings. The next night the heat was so great that sleep was impossible and, as he tossed about, he imagined that he had heard a voice call his name from the balcony of the floor below. The call was repeated, “Basil!” in a tone little above a whisper. He was sure it was the girl Helena and that she had climbed up from the slave quarters by means of the garden latticework.

  Remembering the warning he had received from his mother, he did not respond at once. Then it occurred to him that she might be in need of help. He sat up on the side of his bed and wondered what to do. “Are you going to be a coward?” he asked himself. Finally
he decided he must risk the consequences and, getting to his feet, tiptoed to the door opening on the inner corridor. As he did so, he fancied he detected a sound of rustling and creaking, as though she were making her way back by the same means she had employed in reaching the balcony. He whispered her name but received no response. The silence of the night remained unbroken after that, but the boy could not sleep. He was dissatisfied with himself. “I must be lacking in courage,” he thought a dozen times.

  The next day he heard that she had run away. When he asked Castor about it, the major-domo scowled and said: “I wish I knew where she has gone, the little slut! How I would like to get my hands on her. I would raise welts on that white back of which she is so proud!” He took out the whip that was always with him like a truncheon of office and cracked it viciously. “This much I know, she’s not serving one master now. She will serve a different one every night of her life. That is what she has gone to, the lazy limb of wickedness!”

  3

  Basil soon fell into the new ways and found that living in luxury and being waited on hand and foot were quite pleasant. He became much attached to his new father. Quite often, when Ignatius was talking to other men about matters of trade in the high circular room opening on the garden that he reserved for such matters, his voice would be rough and domineering. None of this showed in his manner to his wife and new son, however. He would walk to the couch where Persis reclined (she never seemed to have enough energy to sit up) and stroke her hair while he asked, “Does my pretty little gray kitten feel any better today?” Unfortunately his pretty gray kitten never felt any better. Her usual answer, in fact, was that she felt worse. She would reach out a hand to touch the sleeve of his tunic, a gesture that would bare her arm to the shoulder and reveal its whiteness and slender purity of line, and say he must not worry, that she would not improve but was reconciled to her ill fortune. The broad and very brown face of the merchant would lose all of its content. He would sigh heavily and seat himself on the nearest couch, from which he would watch her with solicitude.

  Basil became fond of his new mother also. He would fetch and carry for her and never failed to inquire about her well-being. Sometimes she would reward him with a smile of appreciation and even, on a few rare occasions, with a murmured admission that because of his kindness she felt a trifle better.

  When the boy had lived in the white palace a matter of two years, he found himself so accustomed to his new life that the details of his earlier existence seldom came back to mind. Even the face of his real father was a blurred memory. He stopped asking questions about Theron.

  He spent more of his time in the aliyyah above the entrance than anywhere else. Here he could look up and down the Great Colonnade and see the life of the city at high tide: the Roman official strutting pompously with toga over his left shoulder or clattering by in a chariot; the man from the desert on a handsome white Syrian camel with scarlet fringed harness from which a magic amulet dangled; the Jew who wore on his forehead a roll of parchment that was called a phylactery and was inscribed with holy texts; the Phoenician sailor, back from the Pillars of Hercules, with a brass ring in his nose and his hair curled in oily tufts.

  Each day he would see rich neighbors (but none of them as wealthy as Ignatius) starting out for rides through the city. First a flag would be hoisted over the entrance and then there would be a loud beating of gongs and drums. The gate would swing back and two mighty horses would prance out, the reins held invariably in the proud black fists of a smiling driver. Behind, like an anticlimax, would come a tiny carriage with a fancy white canopy under which the members of the family would be closely packed.

  Sometimes he witnessed a spectacle that caused the blood to course turbulently in his veins, a company of Roman soldiers on the march. He could always tell whether they were on parade or leaving for service in the frontier wars; in the latter event, they had “put on the saggum,” a rough gray garment that was worn over the steel-plated habergeon and served also as a blanket at night. When this happened, he would watch the rhythmic marchers in their spiked Umbrian helmets and his eyes would take fire and his nostrils would flex themselves. He had no desire to be a soldier, but the color of war affected him like a fever.

  One incident that occurred on the street below his post of observation always remained vividly in his memory. A vendor of sweetmeats had approached from the direction of the Omphalos, carrying his tray on his head. There was something about the man, an openness of eye and an almost benign cast of feature, that seemed out of keeping with the lowliness of his occupation. Basil, sensing this contrast, watched him closely, wondering about him and speculating as to his nationality. When the vendor reached a point immediately beneath, he was stopped by a customer. Looking down directly on them, the boy witnessed something that caused him to catch his breath. The hand of the vendor, raised ostensibly to make a selection from the tray, stopped instead to draw a piece of paper from a space immediately under the sweetmeats. The paper passed from one to the other and vanished into the sleeve of the purchaser so quickly that no pair of eyes save that of the watcher above could have become aware of what was happening. A small copper coin was tendered and accepted and the pair separated, to be lost at once in the thick traffic of the street.

  Basil said to himself, “I am sure they are Christians.”

  He was recalling a visit he had paid with his real father when a boy of perhaps six years to a synagogue in the part of the city called Ceratium. It had once been handsomely adorned and a curious faith had been preached there openly, based on the teachings of someone called the Christ who had been a Jew. At the time when Theron, out of curiosity, took his youngest son, there had been a change of attitude on the part of the Roman authorities. The boy, who had seen multitudes of people bowing with covered heads before great bronze statues of the gods in the Gardens of Daphne, was astonished to see that the Christians held their heads up high as though watching something infinitely wonderful in the air above them. They sang together, simple airs about love and forgiveness, and their eyes were filled with so much content that Theron had whispered to his son: “These be strange people. But it is a strangeness about which we should know more.”

  A small man with a short blunt beard preached to them. Sometimes his voice was as shrill as the call of a bugle; sometimes it was deep like the thresh of waves over a stone reef; always it drew his listeners to him. His deep-set eyes had seen the miraculous things of which he spoke. He was not of Antioch, for his speech had more of the slurring note of the Romans. There were whispers about him in the audience which coupled the names of Paul and Tarsus.

  The room was as still as a tomb in the rocks of sepulture while he spoke. Theron did not move as much as a hair of his bushy head. Once his hand tightened on the shoulder of the boy and he whispered, “My son, my son, can it be there is only one God and that He is a God of kindness and light?”

  The discourse, however, was far over the head of a boy of six. Ambrose’s attention became riveted instead on a second man, who stood off to one side of the gathering. He had a broad brow and a kindly eye and a smile of such gentleness that each strand in his great red beard seemed to curl in amiability. He was watching, familiarizing himself no doubt with the new faces in the gathering.

  Theron was full of what they had witnessed when they reached the crowded room in the Ward of the Trades that served as home to his brood. “I have heard a great man deliver the most amazing message,” he said, his eyes still veiled and withdrawn.

  His wife had dampened his enthusiasm immediately. “Christians!” she said scornfully. “They are a bad lot. I saw one stoned to death in my native village. It was a woman, and I threw a stone myself. That is what happens to people who become Christians!”

  “But the man Jesus performed miracles,” protested Theron. “Those who follow Him cast out devils also and cause the lame to walk and the blind to see.”

  “Miracles!” scoffed his wife. “The face of that woman had turned black
when I cast my stone. Why wasn’t there a miracle to save her? There is one Simon the Magician who can perform miracles as well. They are all tricks.”

  They never returned to the synagogue, but one thing kept the meeting in Basil’s memory. He recalled the face of the man with the red beard. It was still clear in his mind even when the contour of his own father’s features had become dim and uncertain. What made it stay was a hint there of seeing things which other eyes missed, of hearing sounds, perhaps of music, in the stillest air.

  There had been something of this same look on the face of the vendor of sweetmeats.

  His hands were never idle while he sat in the latticed aliyyah and watched the rich spectacle below. He used bits of charcoal to make sketches on papyrus or on discarded fragments of cloth, catching with a few deft strokes the proud folds of a toga or the dignity of a red-and-white nomadic turban, the furtive leer of an unshaven beggar or the animal grace of a gladiator from the amphitheater that great Caesar himself had built. Later he would carry the sketches back to his room and mold figures in damp clay from the best of them.

  Ignatius joined him once at his post of observation, seating himself with a hint of apology on the colored tiling of the floor. He studied the sketches with which the boy had surrounded himself, making a clucking sound with his tongue that conveyed approval.

  “My son,” he said, lifting up for closer inspection a figure done in wood of a slouching, bowlegged thief, “you have the gift the gods so seldom bestow. There is in this one the strong touch of Scopas. Sometimes I have seen in your work the ease and grace of Praxiteles, but this one is all Scopas; and for that reason I like it much. And yet you have never seen any of the work of these truly great men.” He paused and indulged in a smile at the surprise on the face of the boy. “You did not guess how much I know about the glorious art of our race. You hear me railing and browbeating in that room of mine that is as round as the moon and you see me at meals filled with the troublesome problems of the day. Ah, my son, the glory that is so nearly lost to our race fills my mind oftener than the price of olive oil.” He nodded his head slowly after several moments of reflection. “One day it will be necessary for you to learn something of the affairs of Ignatius the merchant so you will not be at a loss when the reins pass into your hands. But there is plenty of time for that. At the moment it is my earnest desire that you continue as you are doing.”