The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  “Are you listening, O Mijamin?” demanded Adam.

  “I am doing more than listening,” said the Zealot leader. “I have been thinking deeply and I am still in a state of wonder as to what has happened this night. It is true that our immortal Samson killed a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass and that he slew a lion in the land of Timnath with his bare hands and then drew strength by eating of the honey he found in its carcass later. It is true that, after he had been shorn of his locks like an uncleansed Nazarite and then blinded, the strength came back slowly into his stunted muscles and he pulled down the pillars of the temple where the Philistines had gathered in their thousands to mock him. But Samson was a servant of God and was given his strength for a purpose. It was not by the power of his human arm alone that he slew the thousand men; the anger of Jehovah had chilled the hearts of the Philistines, and they were like lambs led to the sacrifice.”

  He stirred uneasily on the ground and strove to ease the pressure of the cords on his arms.

  “Now these three young men from Slador are tall and strong and they are mighty in conflict. But they are not like Samson, who could prevail against any odds. There was no reason for my men to lose heart at once and refuse to fight. They came with me in sufficient numbers to overcome a dozen such as these. Why, then, did they turn and run away? Can it be”—he paused and gave his head a puzzled shake—“can it be that Jehovah is concerned about the safekeeping of this Cup? Does He place about it the veil of His inflexible will so that what seem to be miracles are wrought in its defense? Are we, then, in the wrong? I am deep in a pondering as to the truth, Adam ben Asher, and so far I have not seen the light. Perhaps in this dry and comfortable cave of which these three tall young men have spoken I shall have the time to reach a conclusion.

  “But,” he cried in a concluding word of fierce determination, “do not make the mistake of thinking you have seen the last of me. I do not know what I shall do or where I shall go. I dare not return to Jerusalem at once and face the Mar with another failure to explain. Watch, rather, for me in Antioch. I shall undoubtedly appear there in course of time; though for what purpose I cannot say.”

  Luke had taken off his outer garment of brown wool and had stripped his tunic down to his waist in preparation for the work ahead. No one had been killed, fortunately, but there had been much letting of blood. There were broken heads aplenty and deep cuts and painful contusions. Among the assailants who had been too badly hurt to get away was one who lay outside the circle of light and moaned piteously for help. It developed later that he had suffered a dislocated hip as a result of being tossed over the heads of his fellows by one of the three brothers.

  The physician washed all cuts in a solution of wine and water, working with sure and gentle hands. His face, which showed deep lines of weariness, was filled with compassion for the sufferers. It was a firm conviction with him that wounds should be kept moist, and he strove to accomplish this by a special method of bandaging. He would moisten a piece of sponge and place it over the wound, covering it then with leaves of delicate texture before putting on the final bandage of linen.

  All three of the brothers had suffered injury, but nothing of a serious nature. Luke said in an admiring tone as he bound the gash in the head of Sempronius: “Never have I encountered such perfect physical specimens as you and your brothers. Have any of you ever been ill?”

  The oldest of the trio smiled and shook his head. “No, Master Luke, we are never ill. Why should we be? We eat simple food, we live in the open, we sleep well under the stars. We do not see other people and so we do not catch their complaints. It is a good life we have, my brothers and I.” He nodded to lend added emphasis. “We heal quickly. In a week there will be no trace of this cut on me.”

  The Zealot with the dislocated hip was brought in last. The Chinese prince, who had caused a seat to be arranged for him beside the bed of tamarisk boughs and had watched everything with an avid interest, now licked his lips. “This will be good to watch,” he declared, his head nodding with excitement on his thin neck. “He will be a loud sufferer, this one. He will make most lusty outcries.”

  He was not disappointed. The injured man, who had been beseeching help so loudly, began to entreat that he be left alone when Luke proceeded to lash his arms to his sides. His protestations rose to a still higher pitch when his legs were bound together above the knees with a stout strap of leather. When one of Luke’s assistants attached an iron hook to the limb of a tree hanging over the improvised bed and the wounded man realized that this was part of his treatment, he let out a loud screech and called on Jehovah to save him. Paying no heed to his cries, two of the assistants lifted him up high and then suspended him head downward on the hook like a quarter of beef. He swung back and forth for several moments, moaning, “O Great Father above, save Thy humble servant who will be butchered like a stalled ox!”

  “This reduces the dislocation,” explained Luke, who saw that the watchers were sharing the horror of the patient. “It is always a hard matter to get the joint back into place. It is a serious dislocation and so, much as I deplore the necessity, we must proceed to the most extreme of methods.” He felt the hip and then nodded to one of the assistants. “Now, Tabeel, if you please.”

  The man Tabeel placed his arms about the waist of the sufferer and allowed his own feet to swing off the ground so that the whole of his weight was added to that of the patient. The patient cried out loudly to Jehovah and then fainted. Luke, his face tense, seized the man’s thigh and gave it a skillful twist. There was a loud, cracking sound and the bone slipped back into its socket.

  “Let him down!” cried the physician.

  The assistants lowered the body to the bed of boughs. Luke ran an exploring hand over the hip and then nodded with satisfaction. The operation had been successfully carried out.

  “Most excellently done,” said the prince, bobbing his head. “I enjoyed it very much. How horribly he screamed!”

  Luke was washing his hands in a bowl of hot water. “That one is the last,” he said, “and I am happy there are no more. As I grow older I find in myself an increasing reluctance to cause pain.”

  The first light of dawn was showing in the sky. Adam, who had a quick eye for any chance to save, shouted to extinguish the torches. The three brothers exchanged glances and then nodded in unison.

  “Our mother has been tending the flocks,” said one. “It is time we returned to relieve her.”

  “There will be breakfast in a very short time,” protested Deborra. “I will tell the servants to hurry their preparations.”

  “Our mother will have food for us,” said the one who had spoken before. “It is kind of you, good lady, but we must not delay longer.”

  “But are you strong enough to walk so far?” she asked. “You all have wounds. Surely it would be wiser to rest before setting out.”

  The spokesman smiled quietly as he raised his club over his shoulder. “Our hurts are small.”

  Two of them took Mijamin between them and set off with vigorous strides, a compelling arm through each of his. His short legs seemed to be moving with some of the speed of a mockingbird’s wings in keeping pace with them. The third looked back over his shoulder and gave Deborra a shy smile of parting.

  “Thank you! Thank you all so much!” she cried, waving a hand to them. “The Lord will bless you for the splendid thing you have done tonight.” She waved again for the benefit of the one who had lingered. “I know which one you are. You are Gaius.”

  The smile on his face broadened with gratification at being thus identified. “Yes, lady,” he said. “I am Gaius. The youngest.”

  Adam watched them stride off along the crooked path that followed the winding course of the wadi. Then he turned and gazed intently into the west.

  “The ship on which your father sails to Antioch,” he said to Deborra, “has had no delays. None of which we know. It may be that it has made a great gain on us already. There will be no chance for sleep
now. We must have the camels loaded and be on our way.” He glanced along the northern trail, which was wrapped in a white morning mist. “It is going to be a very hot day.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  1

  THE THIRD DAY saw them toiling along the high paths between the Plain and the Sea of Galilee. By night they were well beyond the uppermost tip of the sea and within sight of the three peaks of Hermon, which is called the Snowy Mountain. All this was country sacred to the memory of Jesus, and so Deborra had not drawn the curtains, fearing that something would escape her. It was a sore blow to her that they could not spare the time to visit Nazareth. She looked longingly up the rocky road that led off to the west and the little village where the young Carpenter had spent His youth, and then she sighed and said, “I would be happy with seeing no more than the roof of the little house of Joseph.”

  Sometimes the road had climbed so high up along the crest of the hills that they would catch glimpses of the water of Galilee. The water was green and still and overhung with clouds as white as the inner walls of paradise. Memories clustered about this sacred sea, and at times Deborra was unable to contain herself. “Perhaps,” she would cry out aloud, “it was here that Jesus walked upon the waters!” or, “Could it have been here that He wrought the miracle of the loaves and fishes?” Once, her grief flooding back into her mind, she burst into tears. “My grandfather and I often talked of the time when we would come here and follow in Christ’s footsteps; and now he is dead and I must do it alone!”

  At a point where the road turned sharply northeast, a ruddy-faced man in a patched woolen garment of russet color came out in front of them and raised a detaining arm.

  “Are ye Christians?” he asked. “Do ye seek to see the country where Jesus lived and first taught? If such ye be, then Theudas is your man. I, Theudas, son of Javan, know the country of the Christ better than anyone living. I can show ye——” He stopped abruptly, his eye having traveled as far along the line of the caravan as the camel on which Luke was perched. His confidence slumped like the drooping of the tail of a reproved dog. “So! We have Luke with us. Luke the Scribbler, Luke the Skeptic. Luke who will not agree that Theudas knows about what he tells. Out with it, then, Luke the Faultfinder! Tell them that Theudas knows nothing, that he is a fraud!”

  Luke looked sternly down at the man. “You know nothing, Theudas,” he said. “And you are a fraud. You make a living by cheating people with false information. This much I promise you: that some day retribution will overtake you. You will raise an arm to point your lies and your body will turn to stone, and you will stand there forever after like the pillar of salt.”

  A spasm of fear shook the frame of Theudas. “Look not at me!” he cried. “I will not be put under one of your spells! I am too wise to be caught in any such net. I am a friend of Simon the Magician. I will go to Simon and I will say to him, ‘Something must be done about this pious old healer of bodies, this Luke from Antioch.’ And Simon will do my bidding and turn you into a snake to crawl for all time on your belly and hiss at men!”

  They rode on without paying any further attention to him. He remained in the middle of the dusty highway, shaking his fists in the air and screeching after them, “Luke, Luke, Luke! May you get the camel’s itch! May you waste away with a running of the reins! I spit on you, Luke the Letter of Blood. Luke the Leech!”

  Luke was compelled to smile. “He is a vituperative rascal,” he said to Deborra, who rode beside him. “The danger with such beggars is the harm they can do to the credulous and to earnest seekers after the truth. Do you know that there are merchants already in Jerusalem who are prepared to sell pieces of the cross on which Jesus died? The cross is in existence and in safe hands, but it will never be divided up for sale among a lot of greedy dealers. There will be more of this traffic as the years pass and the memories of men grow dim. For that reason we should be severe with impostors like Theudas, even though they sometimes cause us to smile.”

  They made camp for the night on the crest of a hill that seemed no more than a mile from the foot of Mount Hermon. The next morning that mile would keep stretching out and multiplying and would turn into many miles indeed, but at this quiet hour of the evening it seemed to the weary travelers that they could see every scar on the face of the mountain and that no more than a foot forward would take them into the evening mists which, as usual, had gathered about the peaks, and that they would feel the cool moisture like a benediction after the heat of the day.

  2

  Adam ben Asher saw to it that the tents were raised with more than the usual expedition and then summoned a council. It met inside the circle of tents, from which rose the tantalizing odors of the supper that was being prepared. The drivers and guards squatted about Adam. As he was acting as his own overseer, he occupied the center, facing the white-capped peaks of Mount Hermon. Luke, Deborra, and Basil, being no more than travelers, were relegated to places outside the circle, and it was understood that they might not take any part in the discussion without the unanimous consent of the caravan men. Deborra, finding herself seated beside Basil, gave him a long and careful smile before drawing her purple palla about her shoulders and lapsing into an attentive silence. Seated directly across from them, Luke watched with a frown. It was clear that he was puzzled by their attitude toward one another.

  Adam began by informing the council that it was highly necessary to reach Antioch before a certain ship could get to that city. The ship in question, which had sailed from Joppa soon after their departure from Jerusalem, was a fast sailing vessel and capable of doing the equivalent of sixty miles a day or even better. Glancing about the circle of absorbed brown faces, he propounded the question, What chance did they have of winning the race to Antioch?

  There followed one of the long silences to which men of the East, and particularly those who passed their lives on the desert trails, were much addicted. Then one of the guards caught Adam’s eye.

  “Master!”

  “I am listening, Shammai.”

  “These are good camels,” said the guard. “Their feet will never linger enough to suffer from sand burns. It is true that some of them are old, but is it not said with great truth that a strong old camel carries the hides of many young ones?”

  “It is a wise saying, Shammai.”

  “The pace must on that account be set by what these older ones are capable of doing. They can do fifty miles a day. But, master, they can do fifty for no more than five days at a stretch. If you try to keep them longer at this fast pace they will grumble and complain. Then they will groan and whimper; and very soon, master, they will drop down to their knees and their heads will sink forward slowly, and they will die of the efforts they have made. I am young, but this I say without hesitation, even in this company of men who are older and wiser than I am, that it would be wrong to do more than thirty-five or forty a day. That gait can be maintained for the whole distance, and none of them will be any the worse for it.”

  “We have listened to the words of Shammai,” said Adam. “If we follow his advice, what chance have we of getting first to Antioch?”

  “May one speak who knows little of such matters but has sailed much on the seas?” asked Luke.

  Adam waited for the nod of acquiescence from the brown heads of the caravan men before saying, “We shall be glad to listen.”

  Luke bowed to the company and expressed his appreciation in the customary phrase, “I thank those who are wiser than I.” Then he bowed to Adam alone. “It is true that a ship may make sixty miles a day, but this is only the case when conditions of wind and sun are perfect. It is to be expected that on some days at this season there will be no wind at all and that ships will float idly on a sea without any swell and with sails hanging as limply as vines after a frost. On such days no progress may be made at all, or at the most a few miles. On the other hand, if the winds are strong, it may be impossible to venture out from the harbor, or at best to creep from island to island. Even when the winds
are not heavy they may blow from the north or west, and then it becomes necessary to take slanting tacks so that a ship may seem to be accomplishing a full day’s journey and yet be no more than a few miles farther at the end of the twenty-four hours.”

  “What does Luke the Physician advise us to do?” asked Adam.

  “I have no advice to give. My sole purpose was to make it clear that there will be difficulties at sea as great as any we may encounter.”

  Seated cross-legged at a point of the circle opposite Adam was a young driver with dark, eager eyes and a ready smile. Basil had liked him from the start and had made occasions to talk with him. He sang a great deal and his name was Chimham.

  “Since there is need to reach Antioch first,” said this young camel man, “we should take every risk to win this race.”

  Basil leaned forward excitedly. “Chimham is right!” he cried. “We cannot afford to be cautious. We must take risks.”

  Adam turned toward him with a hostile eye. “You are an outsider,” he said, “and may not address the council without the consent of the members.”

  A slow fury that had been aroused in Basil by the open antagonism of Adam was on the point of breaking into a blaze. He was so angry at this stage that for a long moment he did not dare risk speaking. Finally he said in a suppressed tone, “Have I the permission of the council to speak?”

  The white-swathed heads bowed their willingness. Basil edged forward and began: “Yes, we must take risks. What will it benefit us if we spare the camels and arrive in Antioch too late to accomplish the purpose that takes us there?”

  “They are my camels,” asserted Adam.

  “You have kept us well aware of that.”

  “If they are driven beyond their powers and die, it will be my loss.”

  “That is clear to all of us.”