The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  “I am a direct man. I do not like dealing with go-betweens, even when they are wives.” Linus was becoming angry. “I came to give a warning to this man whose wife you have become.”

  Deborra remained perfectly cool and self-possessed. “Your likes in the matter do not count. Tell me about this warning and I will convey it to my husband. May I add that we have been expecting a visit from you, with no feeling of pleasure but also with no sense of apprehension?”

  “Some days ago,” declared Linus, his small eyes sultry with resentment, “he called at my house. He was refused admittance. I want him to understand once and for all that he must never try this again. A second attempt will bring a violent reprisal.”

  “He went to see his mother. He is very fond of her, and it had come to his ears that she was not in good health.”

  Linus snorted loudly. “She is no kin of his. The courts so decided.”

  “No matter what a corrupt and well-paid magistrate may have decided,” said Deborra, “my husband considers her his mother. It is his intention to make another call.” She looked at him with a steadiness that caused him to drop his eyes. “You will not close your doors on him a second time.”

  “I have plenty to say to him,” declared Linus. “Since you insist on it, I will tell you. He has been at his tricks again. Worming his way into the household of a rich man and insinuating himself into the good graces of the women. He did it here with my brother’s wife, persuading her to support him in his claim to being an adopted son.”

  “That is a lie.”

  The usurper went on with increased truculence: “He failed here. So he went to Jerusalem and had better success. He seems to have talked himself into your affections. I saw your father before he returned to Jerusalem, and he told me the whole story. This ex-slave seems to have been clever and completely unscrupulous. It will avail him nothing in the end. Your father will take the matter into the courts when he gets back. You lacked his consent, and that will cost you dear. This most persistent of conspirators——”

  “Have you said what you came to say?”

  “Not all. I hear the pair of you are planning to make your home here. I will not tolerate it. His presence would be an affront. I am giving warning that you must leave.”

  “We will stay here in spite of you.”

  Linus waved a hand in the direction of Quintus Annius, who had remained some distance in the rear. “Do you see those documents he holds? They are notes of the story your father told me. How this man played on the senility of your grandfather and then took advantage of you, a girl of tender years. It is not a pretty story at all. I shall know how to use it.” He scowled directly at Deborra for the first time. “You will do well to heed my warning. I have power in Antioch. Great power, if I care to make use of it. If you stay, you and your ex-slave, you will receive a second proof of the power I hold.”

  “You seem to have delivered your message, so I will see that the servants show you to the door.”

  Linus, his face an angry red, turned on his heel. “I shall lose no time,” he threatened. “You and your upstart husband shall feel the full weight of the influence I can bring against you.”

  “Permit me to correct you. You had power and influence in Antioch. You no longer have. At some time in the near future my husband will pay another visit to the house on the Colonnade; his house, if you please. And when he does, the power will be in his hands.”

  The usurper turned and left the courtyard without another word. The chariots departed with less ostentation than they had displayed on arriving.

  Deborra had kept up a bold front, but secretly her confidence had been somewhat shaken. She gave her head a shake. “I do not care about the property. But can Father succeed in having our marriage annulled? That is the only thing that counts.”

  3

  More visitors put in an appearance on the following day, first a man with thin shoulders and a stooped back and a woman who gazed about her with truculence and who tossed her head angrily when the servant at the door demanded to know who they were. It was the woman who answered.

  “Never mind who we are,” she said, her hands on her hips. “We will give our names to the magistrate if it is necessary. We have come to claim a runaway slave.”

  “There is none such here,” said the servant.

  The woman brushed past him and stalked into the first court. She threw back her head and began to screech. “Come down, you Basil! Come down, slave! We are your owners and we have come to claim you!”

  Deborra came hastily into the court when this clamor began. She had been engaged in household duties and was wearing a plain red robe with her hair bound in a light turban known as a tsaniph. She looked disturbed, as well she might, having no idea who they were or the reason for their coming.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “Why are you here?”

  The woman drew herself up with an attempt at dignity, although her eyes were already beginning to glitter furiously.

  “You must be the woman he married,” she said. “If you are, I feel sorry for you; but I have nothing to say to you. I am here to claim my property.” She threw back her head again and allowed her voice to rise to a shrill pitch. “Come down, slave! We have found you out and it will do no good to hide, wherever you are.”

  The man took it on himself to explain at this point: “I am the owner of a slave who ran away from my house some months ago. We know that he is here.”

  Deborra turned to look at him. He was very dark and so small that there was something almost comic about his attempt to assert himself. “I begin to understand,” she said. “Are you Sosthene of Tarsus?”

  “Yes, I am Sosthene.” He had intended to say more, for his mouth remained open. His wife intervened, however, giving him an impatient shove with one of her skinny arms.

  “Keep out of this,” she warned. “They will get the better of you if you do not keep that idle mouth shut. I know them. I know you. It was decided between us that I would do all the talking.”

  “There is no more talking to do,” declared Deborra. “My husband’s freedom was purchased from you——”

  “It is a lie!” cried the woman. “He ran away. Not a single coin did we receive for him. He will be soundly whipped when we get him back.”

  Deborra, whose face had become white and tense, had to retreat a step to avoid the arms Eulalia was waving about in a kind of frenzy.

  “My husband has the documents,” she said. “Are you aware that he has been restored to full citizenship? How dare you bring such an absurd charge as this?”

  “Lies!” cried Eulalia. “We signed no documents. If you have documents, they are forged. We will go to the court and say so. You had better talk no more about documents.”

  Deborra disregarded the man, who stood silently and gaped about him, and looked steadily at the woman. She said in low and unhurried tones: “I can see that you are as base as you appear. How fortunate it is that we can settle this matter easily. Luke is here. You will remember that it was Luke who arranged the terms with you. He will soon make it clear that this is all a wicked pretense on your part. You have been sent here by Linus.”

  “Lies! Lies and deception! Linus did not send us. I know nothing of this Luke.”

  Sosthene shuffled his feet uneasily when Luke entered the court, but his wife was prepared for it. She stared at the newcomer and then turned back to Deborra.

  “I have never seen this old man before. I will not listen to any lies the two of you have made up.”

  “You speak of lies.” Luke walked to the center of the court where the pair were standing. He looked steadily into the woman’s eyes for several moments. His manner reflected a deep sadness. “Of how much evil the human heart is capable! Think, woman, before you persist in these pretenses.”

  “Look not at me, old man!” cried Eulalia. “I do not know who you are. Never before have I seen you.”

  Luke’s eyes had become deeply reflective. When he spoke again, it was a
pparent that the voice that sometimes spoke in his mind and told him what to say or do had been prompting him. “You are saying to yourself, ‘He came, this soft-spoken but hard old man, in the hours of darkness and no one saw him. This makes it safe to claim we know him not.’ ”

  “Now you are trying to put lies into my mind.”

  “You are thinking this also, ‘We have acted poor and our neighbors will swear we have not the money to buy another slave.’ ”

  The woman’s jaw went slack and she stared at him with nothing to say. Sosthene elected at this point to speak. “It is true,” he declared, nodding his head, “that we have not been able to buy a new slave to assist me in my work.”

  “Keep your loose mouth closed!” cried Eulalia. “They will get the better of you. You are as soft as dough.”

  Deborra interrupted to ask, “Was not the money paid to them by Jabez?”

  Eulalia began then to cackle with scorn and triumph. “If we had sold him, would we have been simple enough to leave such proof as that?”

  “They refused payment through Jabez,” affirmed Luke. “I had to go to his house and get them gold. The woman would hear of nothing else.”

  “It will be our word,” asserted Eulalia, “against that of a wandering Christian and a runaway slave. We are known as honest citizens. We pay our taxes. The best people buy from us. You know what the verdict would be in any court in the land.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Luke began to speak, looking directly into the woman’s eyes. “I will tell you the thought that fills your mind at this moment. You are thinking, bearer of false witness that you are, that it is a good thing we do not know you bought land after all. It was not the farm of the Three Pear Trees. It was a somewhat smaller one and closer to the city walls. There you have a keeper whose name is Maniteles and who is stiff in one leg and cannot expect much pay. He gets, poor fellow, very little from you. Shall I tell you the exact amount?”

  “Lies,” said the woman in a tone so low that it was almost humble.

  “You bought this land the day after you disposed of Basil and—you paid the exact amount you received for him.”

  Eulalia was staring at Luke in openmouthed unease. Sosthene was unable to cover up the alarm that had taken possession of him.

  Luke’s eyes still held Eulalia an unwilling victim. “It is possible sometimes to read what is passing through the mind of another. I may tell you that yours is wide open to me. It has been telling me everything that happened.”

  “Lies!” she exclaimed; but all of the certainty and most of the venom had gone out of her voice.

  “You denied being sent here by Linus. That is false. You saw him last evening. You demanded one hundred dinars for the service he asked of you—to come here with this story—and it was finally agreed you were to receive eighty. Half of that amount was paid you in advance.”

  “Let us go!” cried Sosthene. He looked pale and abject.

  “When the slave girl Agnes was purchased, you told neighbors that you had received a good figure for the man and that now you had sold a dying girl for the price of a healthy one. Your neighbors have little love for you and they have repeated the remark widely.”

  “Enough!” exclaimed Sosthene. “We will go from here and we will never come back.”

  He took one of Eulalia’s arms and began to drag her from the court. She tried to hold back, casting angry looks over her shoulder but being careful to avoid the eyes of Luke.

  When the outer door had clanged behind them, Luke nodded slowly to Deborra. “We will hear nothing more from them. The woman has already made up her mind not to return the forty dinars to Linus. She has gone away hating us but afraid of what more we may learn. She is afraid of her past.”

  Deborra was looking pale and tired. “I was in a panic!” she acknowledged. “That evil woman! What would we have done if she had been able to establish her claim?”

  4

  A third visitor arrived within an hour after the departure of the discomfited silversmith and his shrewish wife. Deborra, in the meantime, had finished her household duties and had arrayed herself in cool white. She was sitting in a shaded corner of the second court and strumming idly on her kinnor when a tall man with a wicker tray on his head was ushered in by the custodian of the door. If Basil had been there he would have recognized at once the fine brow and widely spaced eyes under the tray and so have identified the visitor as the vendor of sweetmeats who had paused once under the aliyyah of the house of Ignatius to deliver a surreptitious message to a customer.

  The tall man bowed without disturbing the position of the tray or dislodging its contents, a feat possible only through long practice. “I have messages,” he said, “for those who dwell in this house.”

  “My husband is engaged,” said Deborra. “But Luke the Physician is here. Shall I have him join us?”

  The man bowed again. When Luke arrived, his eyes heavy with the afternoon sleep from which he had been roused, he recognized the visitor at once.

  “It is Hananiah,” he said, smiling in welcome. “It is gratifying to see that you continue in good health. This is Deborra, the granddaughter of Joseph of Arimathea and wife of Basil. What have you learned on your journeyings back and forth through the streets of the city?”

  “That God is good,” answered Hananiah, “and that His Son has brought much happiness into the hearts of men. I have learned of things that matter much less, Luke the Physician.” He dropped his voice to a low pitch. “Tobias, who watches at the Iron Gate, reports the arrival of Mijamin, the Zealot from Jerusalem. He came alone, looking very tired, as though he had seldom stopped for sleep. Having in mind what you told us of the activities of this man, we have seen to it that his movements are watched. What I am particularly charged to tell you is that a meeting of the Zealots is to be held tonight. They will no doubt discuss the news that Mijamin brings. We have not been able to learn where the meeting is to be held.”

  “The coming of Mijamin,” said Luke, “has to do with that which is being guarded in this house.”

  Hananiah nodded his head. “There is this much in our favor. The authorities watch the Zealots closely. It has been forbidden them to hold meetings or to gather in force. They will have to act with great caution. Jehovah be praised for all His mercies.”

  Luke watched the tall figure on its way to the door. “Hananiah was once a man of great wealth. When he came into the fold he gave his olive groves to the men who had worked for him and turned all his gold to the church to be distributed among the poor. For years he and his wife have lived under a strip of canvas in the back yard of a tannery. His wife makes the sweetmeats and he sells them, and they live happily on the meager proceeds.”

  “He has a wonderful face,” commented Deborra.

  Luke was giving thought to the situation they faced. “Basil must not be told of this,” he said. “If he knew, he would think it his duty to remain with us. It is more important to have the Chalice finished so we can give it into the hands of the church leaders, here or in Jerusalem. I confess it will be a weight off my mind when it will no longer be necessary to keep it hidden this way. To have it finished should be our first consideration, and so we must not keep him here.”

  “Yes, we must see that he goes at once to Ephesus.”

  Luke smiled at her with affectionate confidence. “To let him go will put a heavy load on your shoulders, my child. I know you can carry it.” He considered the situation with frowning absorption. “There are a thousand Christian homes in Antioch. We can find in one of them a safe place for the Cup. Perhaps we should see to its removal at once. Mijamin will not waste any time.”

  Basil made his way down to the court, coming straight from his work-table. His hands were discolored from his labors and there were beads of solder on the folds of his acid-stained tunic. He looked very tired.

  “I have finished,” he said. He sank down on a bench close to the chair where she was sitting. “There are still the heads to be don
e after I have been to Ephesus and Rome. Do you not agree that I should take the first ship sailing north?”

  Deborra had laid the kinnor to one side and was engaged in some sewing. She looked up at him and smiled.

  “I am delighted that you are through. Are you pleased with it?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head doubtfully. “The design is good. But have I carried it out as well as I should? Sometimes I look at it and think to myself that Scopas could not have done better. Sometimes I feel that a green apprentice would crush it under his heel rather than acknowledge it as his own. At this moment I am too tired to have any feeling about it at all.” He leaned against the stone back of the bench and gazed up at the patch of sky above the green tiling of the roof. “I thought I heard voices down here. They sounded loud, as though there was some dispute.”

  Deborra had lowered her eyes over her work. She continued calmly with her sewing. “It was nothing,” she said. “Nothing, at least, for you to be concerned about.”

  5

  The days had fallen into a pattern. Deborra and Basil began them at an early hour, rising while the freshness of the dawn was still in the air and breakfasting together in the second court while the sky in the east was filled with shifting fingers of light. Basil was an easy and even enthusiastic riser and he always came to the meal in the best of spirits. He talked, he laughed, he even sang. His appetite was good. Deborra was an unwilling riser. Left to herself, she would have remained in bed to a much later hour, and so she came to the table on laggard feet. She would yawn, and she never had much to say. She would sip a cup of milk without any pleasure and nibble at some bread and fruit.

  As the day progressed, this state of affairs reversed itself. His optimism gradually lessening, Basil would hear his wife’s voice raised about the house and gardens and he would trace how it became more animated as the hours passed. She supervised the work of the domestics with thoroughness but still had time for music and for romping with her clumsy, heavy-footed dog. The cat from the Nile, having conceived an intense distrust of the dog, could not be persuaded to join them. He did a great deal of morose sitting on walls and would not come down.