The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  “I think all Jews must be Zealots at heart,” said Basil.

  “We are proud,” she said. “And we have always been so few. We have been surrounded by powerful neighbors who have made war on us. Because we have been so proud, they have tried to break us, to make us forget our ways and to worship their gods. They have led us away into captivity, and burned our temples, and tumbled down the walls of our cities. But we have never changed; and because of this, we are Zealots at heart, all of us.”

  They turned back to the house then, but before they reached the door Basil came to an abrupt stop. He struck an angry hand to his forehead.

  “I left everything behind!” he cried. “My tools. My materials. And—and the head of Paul! Now what am I to do?”

  She became all contrition at once. “I am so sorry. It was my fault. My carelessness has done this to you.” Her eyes seemed on the point of filling with tears. “Was the head finished?”

  He nodded. “Yes. And I was pretty well satisfied with it. I must go back at once and find it.”

  Deborra gave her head a hasty shake. “That would not be safe. They may be on the watch for you to come back. No, Basil, we must wait and do nothing. I think it would be dangerous even to send anyone else to look.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  1

  BASIL SET TO WORK as soon as he reached his room and had made enough headway to arouse some confidence that a suitable copy of Paul’s head could be made when Benjie the Asker appeared in the doorway.

  “A suspicious occupation,” said the visitor, entering the room and closing the door after him. “Would it surprise you to know that a head in clay, quite similar to what you are making there, has fallen into the hands of Ananias, the High Priest? They are searching high and low for the artist who ran away and left it.”

  Basil hastily draped a cloth over his work. “Have they been here?” he asked.

  Benjie shook his head. “The trail has not led this far. It is very fortunate that the little lady of the house, who does not seem to have been behaving herself today with her usual good sense, was not recognized. Of course, if they succeed in tracing the artist, they may also lay their hands on the more important figure in the case. How the worthy Ananias would enjoy the chance to attack our master through his granddaughter!”

  Basil had been cleansing his hands hurriedly at the laver. “What do you want me to do? I presume I must leave.”

  The little man shook his head. “You will be safer here than anywhere else. But you will have to go into hiding. I warn you that you must not expect comfort.”

  “What about the—the other figure in the case?”

  “The lady of the house,” answered Benjie, “is already on her way to a relative who lives some distance north of Jerusalem. She left—and most unhappy she seemed at the need—with a guard of servants and Adam ben Asher himself in charge.” He went to the door and gave a quick glance up and down the corridor. “It will be safe to come now. Your belongings will be brought to you later. But bring the model with you. We want no other eyes to see that.”

  The room in which Basil found himself ensconced within a few minutes was in the warehouse. It was reserved, clearly enough, for such use, as it could be reached only through a low opening behind a pile of meal sacks. It had no window and depended for light on a tongue of flame which Benjie set to burning in a pewter bowl filled with oil. The air was heavy but had a clean smell of grain about it.

  Benjie looked around him and winked at Basil. “Everyone in the household will know you are here,” he said. “All except Aaron. There is a continuous conspiracy to keep things from Aaron. He does not even know this hidden room exists.”

  “Can they be depended on to keep the secret now?” asked Basil anxiously.

  The Asker interlocked his fingers and gripped his hands together tightly. “It will be kept as tight as that,” he said. “Have no fear. You have many friends among the slaves. Ebenezer says you are like a young David with a chisel in your hands instead of a harp. But that is going too far.” His errand was completed, but he delayed his departure to give some information about what had been happening. “Paul has been put under lock and key by the Romans. I am told that the High Priest and Rub Samuel are furious that he escaped the violent end they had planned for him. They are just as angry over the escape of a certain young lady and an artist who helped her get away.”

  “What will the Romans do with Paul?”

  “The High Priest will demand that he be released for trial before the Sanhedrin. He will be murdered in cold blood if they can cajole or browbeat Lysias into turning him over to them. But the story is going around that, when they were going to scourge Paul, he told Lysias he was a Roman citizen. The captain will not dare now to hand him over.”

  It was impossible to keep track of the passing of the hours in the darkness of his sanctuary behind the meal sacks, but Basil had one means of guessing, the sounds that reached him faintly of warehouse activities. By this method of reckoning, the afternoon of the next day was well spent when the Asker paid him another call. The latter seemed in a satisfied frame of mind.

  “Things have quieted down,” he said. “Ananias—the High Priest—continues to demand the custody of Paul, but I have learned that Lysias will not give way. As Paul is a Roman citizen, he must be judged in a Roman court. It is certain that Lysias will keep his own toga clear by sending his prisoner to Caesarea and let Ananias scream himself into an apoplectic fit if he so desires. I may tell you also that the lady of the house reached her destination safely.”

  Basil sighed with relief. “Then we are over the worst.”

  “I hear,” said Benjie, eying him closely, “that Ananias is taking a very great interest in the head of Paul. I am not sure we are over the worst.” He paused at the door to say, “Simon the Magician will make an appearance in the city within a few days. Ananias has given his consent and has even agreed to let him use Herod’s Gymnasium. These are indeed strange times, young artist.”

  2

  After two days spent in the gloom of his sanctuary the spirits of the prisoner in that dark corner of the warehouse reached a low ebb. The air became heavy and the flicker of light in the pewter lamp made his eyes ache. He could not work and he could not sleep; nor after the second day could he any longer control his thoughts. He paced about in the darkness, his arms locked behind his back. Four steps would take him from one wall to the opposite one, and he began to understand the wild longings and the despair of a caged animal. His head throbbed continuously.

  A plan for the silver framework had already taken shape in his mind. He would design an open scroll of grapevines into which the figures would be introduced, as well as small objects symbolic of the times and of the individual lives of the chosen twelve. The base would be a lotus blossom with two rows of petals. He could see this clearly in his mind and at intervals his fingers felt the urge to get started. To his dismay, however, he found himself unable to concentrate for any length of time. Other thoughts would come unbidden to fill his mind.

  On the third night he had a dream. At the time he was not sure it was a dream because it seemed too real; the conviction of its unreality came to him later. He was lying on his couch and the light in the lamp had guttered down so low that most of the room was in shadow. He became aware with a start of surprise and fear that Ignatius was in the room and staring at him with hollow and sorrowful eyes.

  “Father!” he cried, sitting up in his nakedness on the edge of the bed. He wanted to tell this visitor from beyond the grave that he had been despoiled, that the thieving Linus had robbed him of his inheritance. Something in the steady gaze with which his father was regarding him was proof, however, that this was not necessary.

  “My son,” said the spirit of the man who had been the great merchant prince of Antioch, “I have come to beg a favor of you.”

  Basil felt a cold chill pass over him. His midnight visitor seemed hazy of outline and lacking in substance. There was a weariness about him
that carried no hint of everlasting content.

  Ignatius continued speaking slowly and solemnly. “You must win back the fortune that you carelessly allowed my brother to steal from you, the fortune I made by a lifetime of toil and which he is now using to such corrupt purposes. It must come back to you so that it can be used as I intended.” The visitor gave vent to a lugubrious sigh. “I am very unhappy, my son. I have not found favor because of the kind of life I lived. I am judged to have been grasping and unfair in my dealings with other men. It is held against me that I was a hard taskmaster to my slaves. There is one point in my favor, and one only, the purpose to which I desired my wealth put. Because of this I have not yet been wholly condemned. I am allowed to remain in the House of Suspended Judgment. The sheet they keep on Ignatius, oil merchant of Antioch, can be balanced in his favor only if you do as I bid you; if you get back what I left and spend it as I desired.”

  The eyes of the pale visitor were fixed on Basil with so much love mingled with supplication that the latter felt an eagerness to do what he could about the adverse balance sheet. “Father,” he said, “I am going to see Kester of Zanthus as soon as I reach Rome.”

  The spirit nodded. “I know about your plans. I may tell you, my son, that Kester is an honest man. I can see into his mind and I know he remembers everything that happened on the day of your adoption. But he is an old man. I have been admitted to the house far beyond the skies above us where the sands run in the hourglasses, and there is little left in the one that bears the name of Kester of Zanthus. Basil, Basil, you must see him at once or it will be too late.”

  Basil was convinced now that it was not a dream, that it was really his father who had come into the room. He rose from his couch.

  “Do not come too close!” exclaimed Ignatius. “It—it is not allowed.”

  “Father, I must explain,” said Basil. “I want to do as you command me, but there is a difficulty. I have another task to perform and I am told I must attend to it first. It will take me to Rome, and there I shall see Kester. I shall then return to Antioch and use what he has told me to dispossess Linus. But all this will require much time.”

  Ignatius sighed deeply and gave his head a shake. “I know about the other task. It is allowed us in the House of Suspended Judgment to see and hear what goes on in the world. At this moment we are watching three wars, a king dying of poison administered by his favorite wife, an earthquake in Seen that is burying cities and changing the shape of an empire. But all of us know that what you are doing is of greater importance than everything else that is happening in the world. If you succeed, there will be great rewards for you. But will that help me? No, Basil, not if the sands run out in the hourglass of Kester before you get to Rome.”

  Basil had been aware from the first that they were not alone in the room, that someone else was present who could not be seen. At this point a voice joined in the conversation, a sharp and acid voice. It seemed to come from behind him, which was impossible because his couch was against the wall. It even seemed to him that the voice proceeded from the back of his own mind.

  “Ignatius, you must not count on this ungrateful son,” said the unfriendly voice. “He is a frail reed to lean upon. How do I know?” There was a laugh at this point, a bitter and scornful laugh. “I know because I live with him. I dwell inside him. I know everything that passes in his mind.”

  “Who are you and why do you speak in this way?” demanded Ignatius, looking about him to locate the owner of the voice, and failing to do so.

  “Who am I? I am nothing now, no more than an evil spirit. Once I was a man of substance and wealth as you were, Ignatius of Antioch. My name was Claudius and I traded in naval stores at Joppa. I was not honest in my dealings and sometimes I sent ships out with bad food and inadequate supplies. Because of this I, too, failed to find favor when I reached the house where you stay. But now I want to explain to you that this son you adopted is a weakling and that he has no stomach for the kind of revenge a proper man would seek. He does not believe that an eye must be demanded for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is because he is becoming a Christian. He does not know this himself, not yet. But I, who dwell in his brain, know it.”

  “A Christian?” Ignatius seemed to have doubts on this point.

  “Yes. They are all Christian in this house. They are followers of the Nazarene—and they are striving to win your son over. He has been so far persuaded that now his thoughts are full of tenderness and love instead of plans for his revenge on Linus. If you were to slap him on one cheek, what would he do? He would turn the other cheek.

  “You asked who I am and so I must tell you more about myself. Mine is the kind of voice you will hear coming out of clouds and thickets and from mouths such as this. I go about doing evil. It is not that I always enjoy this duty that has been imposed upon me. It is a hard thing for a soul, which has lived in the physical comfort of a body, to find itself condemned to wander in the winds and the cold of space. There are many of us and sometimes, because of our mutual need, we flock together. I cannot explain why it is, but we gather in the most dolorous of places. At the dumps, where we cluster over heaps of fish scales and rotting bones and we are shoved about by snarling, sniffling dogs. Or we congregate outside the city walls after the gates have been closed for the night. There is no place more mournful than this; with the wailing of lepers and the complaining of travelers who have not arrived in time to be admitted as they shiver in their cloaks, and with the donkeys staked out where there is no grass to crop, and the wind whipping back and forth with the whimper of the lost souls on it.”

  The face of Ignatius wore a puzzled frown. “There is so little time for us to talk,” he complained. “And this voice goes on and on. Will it never stop?”

  The voice of the lost soul had no intention of stopping. “Even when we succeed in getting inside a living body, we are not very content. We are all people who have sinned greatly and we have no patience with the incitements of little minds to poor little wrongdoings. How would that magnificently wicked queen Jezebel enjoy living in the sour mind of a tattling, nagging woman? How would Herod, the greatest sinner of all, bear the stupidities of a dull, grasping merchant with no thought beside the price of dried fish?”

  The evil spirit proceeded then to talk of its own experiences with the relish of one who has long been denied the sweetness of an audience. “I took possession of this young man when he was sold as a slave. His mind was then of the kind one could enjoy sharing. It was filled with dark thoughts of revenge. I fed these thoughts. Aiy, it was exhilarating!

  “But when we reached Jerusalem I was conscious of an immediate change. He stopped listening to me. Instead he was listening to the little granddaughter. His mind became soft and almost involved in the sickening throes of young love. How could I, a thoroughly bitter spirit, be contented in a mind filled with the honey of sweet thoughts?”

  “Is there to be no end to this?” asked Ignatius in a despairing voice.

  “I have said my say,” declared the voice.

  Basil fell back into sounder sleep at this point. When he wakened in the morning he remembered everything that had been said and he was certain it had been a dream. Later he began to wonder. He felt depressed in mood and irritable. He criticized without just cause the servant who brought him his morning meal, and when he fell to his pacing back and forth his mind was filled with an unaccustomed bitterness toward those who had abandoned him to such discomfort. He had never been like this before, and at one point he checked himself in his stride and asked aloud, “Can it be that there was a Claudius of Joppa and that he has taken possession of my mind?”

  Later in the day something happened that convinced him it had not been a dream. He had seated himself at his table for the purpose of putting some finishing touches to a bust of Luke that he had been making from memory. It had been a labor of love and he felt he had been more successful with it than with any of the others. Every facial characteristic of the kindly physician ha
d been faithfully recorded, every hollow and fullness, every wrinkle. He looked at it now, however, with a critical viewpoint and decided that it had one fault.

  “The eyes are a shade too small,” he said to himself.

  In these lands where men’s eyes narrowed to slits in the fierce light of the sun and were subject to many serious ailments as a result of exposure to light and heat and dust, the Greek people enjoyed a degree of immunity not granted to any other race. They were sometimes called Those Who See Much. Luke had eyes of a particularly generous size. Convinced that he had not done justice to his benefactor in this respect, Basil set to work to make the eyes larger. It was a difficult correction, but he began to feel as the work progressed that he was succeeding.

  His mind in the meantime began to wander. It went back to the dream of the night before and finally came to rest on Linus. A picture of the usurper drove everything else out; Linus in rich robes, fat of body and smug of face, sitting in the offices of the white palace and issuing orders to the men who had once worked for Ignatius. A black hatred boiled up inside Basil. The voice that had spoken last night was right. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! What joy there would be in taking the throat of his father’s brother in his hands and squeezing the life out of him!

  In response to this inner impulse, his fingers dug deeply into the damp clay. The face of Luke vanished under the savage pressure. In the fraction of a second the loving labor of days was reduced to a formless mass.

  Seeing what he had done, Basil placed the clay on the table in front of him and gazed in horrified silence at the hands that had committed this act of vandalism.