One morning the room on the ground floor that served as an office was occupied by an industrious Helena, who pored over a sheaf of documents and frowned at the difficulties they presented. She was startled when a hand was laid with the pressure of familiarity on her bare shoulder. Her face flushed when she found that it belonged to Idbash, the boldest of the three clerks who had served Kaukben in Jerusalem.
“Never do that again!” she said, shaking his hand off quickly. “Never. Do you understand?”
Idbash looked down at her with smoldering eyes. He had come up a long step in the world when Simon had decided that he would be useful to take along, having been promoted to the post of major-domo. It was a large establishment now in view of the magician’s new prominence, and Idbash was fully conscious of his importance.
“You have allowed me greater privileges than touching your shoulder, my beautiful Helena,” he said.
She regarded him with cold detachment. “Are you forgetting that you take orders from me?” she asked. “Remember this always: I have never allowed you a privilege of any kind.”
Idbash said in a voice of the deepest intensity, “My beautiful Helena lies.”
She was surprised to find that his face had become pale and that his very long and very thin nose was twitching violently. “The past is the past,” she declared, as though saying so sponged out everything that had happened. “That is a lesson that quite apparently you must still learn. Clerks can be made into major-domos, but I remind you that major-domos can be changed back into clerks even more quickly.”
“If I should go to Simon,” said the young Samaritan, “it would not be to tell him of what there has been between us. No, no, my sweet and beautiful Helena, even a simple Samaritan can see far enough from the end of his nose to avoid any such mistake as that.”
Her voice was deceptively low and free of feeling. “You have thought, then, of going to Simon?”
“Yes! By the rocks and falls of Ebal, yes! But when I do go, I will tell him other things. Perhaps I will tell him of the visits that have been paid by a certain great senator. Of the notes he has sent. Of the flowers and melons and sweetmeats. Of his even more substantial presents.”
Helena laughed scornfully. “You have my permission, Long-ears, to tell your master anything you care about the great senator. You will not be telling him anything he does not already know.”
“It must not be the senator, then,” said Idbash, his beady eyes bristling with malice. “I might tell him instead of someone who is not rich or well known. A certain young officer in the Praetorian Guard, perhaps?”
Helena had continued to turn the documents over with a pretense of industry. At this point her hand stopped. “And now, Long-ears, it is you who lie.”
“I speak the truth,” said the major-domo with sudden roughness. “I have followed you. Three times I have followed you when you slipped out at night. I have hidden myself among the statues on the Forum Romanorum. I have seen him come out of the shadows to join you. Once I was standing behind the open door of the Temple of Janus when it happened. I have followed him to his barracks and so I know who he is. I have made inquiries and I know a great deal about him. I have made acquaintances among the servants of the Guards and I have been told many things. I could weave a pretty story about the lady who says I have never before laid a hand on her shoulder.” The venom died out of his voice and he looked at her beseechingly. “I would die for you!”
Her anger conquered her. “You are a liar and a thief of reputations! You are a Samaritan! If you dare to speak to me again like this, or if you speak to anyone else, you will be sent back to your post behind that sign where the stones strike all day long.”
She gathered up the documents and left the room without another glance at him.
Servants and porters passed her respectfully as she pursued her way to her own rooms on the floor above. The screech of saws and the clang of hammers came from the rear of the house, where carpenters were constructing an ingenious device with hidden wires; a most curious contraption, indeed, which Simon the Magician intended to employ soon in his efforts to shake belief in Christianity. An individual in a rumpled toga raised an unwashed arm carelessly in greeting to her and said in an offhand tone, “Blackbirds roosting in a philosopher’s hat.” This salutation marked him as a member of the fraternity of magicians in Rome. He was, obviously, down on his luck and had been hired to act as one of the corps of assistants Simon would use in dazzling Rome; in the manipulation of invisible wires and whispering tubes and in creating interruptions at exactly the right moments.
Helena paid no attention to the greetings of these supernumeraries. She hurried to her bedroom and began to cool her burning face in the scented water spouting from a mechanical laver. She was thus engaged when a maidservant came to the door.
“A visitor for you, gentle lady,” said the girl. She proceeded then to demonstrate the thoroughness of the training to which even the domestics were subjected in this unusual establishment. “He is young. Rather handsome. A Greek, I think. His robe is plain but of the best material. I suspect there is little money in his purse. He seems to be uneasy.”
“You tell me everything but his name.”
“I did not tell you his name, but he has not been truthful about it. He says he came to see you in Jerusalem and that his name is Alexander.”
Helena dried her face quickly. “Take him to the small reception room off the aula downstairs. Do not offer him wine or refreshments. Tell him there will be some delay. But,” with an admonitory frown, “do not let him go away.”
The frenzied existence into which he had been plunged by his sudden great success had created curious moods in Simon the Magician. He was disposed to wander about in a kind of daze, his mind filled with triumphant speculations that he did not share with anyone. He had left the management of the household in Helena’s capable hands. His interest was intermittent even in the work going on about the place. What made things still more difficult for Helena, who was doing most of the planning, was his tendency to drink.
There was a wine cup in his hand when she found him on the rooftop. He had placed a yellow robe inscribed with the words SIMON MAGUS over a comfortable couch and was reclining on it at his ease. She snatched the wine cup away with a furious gesture.
“Sit up and pay heed to what I say!” she cried fiercely. “What is more useless than a bird with a broken wing? I will tell you, my arbob of fools: a magician with an unsteady hand.”
Simon was sufficiently mellowed by the wine to accept this reproof in an amiable mood. “Does it matter that my hand may become unsteady,” he asked, “if my spirit waxes in resolution and a divine strength surges through my being?”
“You are drunk already,” she said with disgust. “I have no time to deal with you now as you deserve. Gather your wits sufficiently to tell me if the potion is ready for the rich widow who was here yesterday.”
“Ah, yes, the fat and oily widow from the provinces. The love potion is prepared. How much good will it do that waddling specimen of middle-aged folly?”
Helena made no response, being already halfway down the stairs to the floor below.
“She is in a vile mood, my zadeeda,” said Simon aloud.
He got to his feet and walked unsteadily to the parapet. Here he stood for several minutes, looking up at the tall temples on the crest of the Palatine Hill above him. He began to talk to himself in a mumbling torrent of words.
“Twenty thousand, fifty thousand, one hundred thousand. They are beginning to see, to believe in me. Soon I will have more followers than this meek Jesus. I am not meek! How Nero watched me! I could see out of one eye that he was frightened and fascinated. He talked to me so eagerly afterward. It was hard to answer his questions without giving too much away. He did not think all of them tricks. That I could see; he was sure I had magic powers and he was afraid of me. Perhaps he will write a song about me and sing it to the people.”
He threw back his bony sho
ulders and stared about him triumphantly. His eyes wandered to the left of the Palatine crest where white parapets stood up above the fringe of trees. He raised a hand in salute.
“If you were alive today and could stand up there on the roof of your grand house, O Cicero,” he cried, “we could exchange greetings! Two great men could wave one to the other. As it is, the great maker of magic, who is alive and reaching his peak of divinity, sends his salutations to you, who have been dead and moldering in your grave a hundred years, O Cicero, greatest of orators!”
He retraced his wavering steps to his couch. “I will convince them. I will hold them spellbound even as Cicero did. I will convince her. She laughs at me now, but I will prove to her that I have the same power as this man Jesus!”
2
When Helena entered the small reception room where Basil waited, she was attired once more in a straight and loose linen robe. Her feet were bare and her black hair fell freely over her shoulders. It had been brushed until it shone. She stood in the doorway for a moment and looked at him reproachfully.
“I know all about you,” she said. “The story reached us at Ephesus. You are married. To the granddaughter of Joseph of Arimathea. I never expected to see you again. I was sure what had happened would change everything.” Then she smiled, raising her eyes gravely to his. “But you have come after all. You haven’t forgotten the promise you made that—that night when we had the Gymnasium all to ourselves but still whispered as low as though there were thousands of ears about us to listen. For that, Basil, I am very grateful.”
She was more beautiful than before, he said to himself. Her eyes were soft and inviting. The severity of her garb did not succeed in concealing the enticing grace of her figure.
Uneasily he said: “I do not know what our permanent plans will be. At present we have a house in Antioch, and it may be that we will stay there.”
She looked at him with instantly aroused interest. “In Antioch?” Her eyes became shrewdly reflective. After a moment she nodded her head. “After all, it was to be expected. Your wife’s father was not likely to approve.”
“We are in Antioch because Joseph had accumulated funds there for my wife’s use.”
Helena’s eyes narrowed in speculation. “Her father must have been very angry. Simon, who knows him well, says he is the most grasping man in Jerusalem. Do I offend you by speaking so freely of your affairs?”
Basil denied any feeling of offense by a shake of his head. “I have seen little of Deborra’s father. It is unlikely I shall ever see him again.”
“Then it is as I thought.” Helena’s mind had gone busily to work. “Have you ever spoken of me to your wife?”
“I told her of meeting you in Jerusalem.”
“Do you think that was wise?” She did not wait for an answer. “It is always the way. Men cannot keep anything from their wives. I am sure she was not pleased. Of this I am certain: you must not speak of coming to see me here.”
“She wanted me to see you. She made me promise I would do so.”
Helena looked surprised. “Your wife is wiser than most would have been. She is wiser than I expected.”
She had seated herself near the one window in the room and had arranged the linen folds of her robe gracefully over her crossed knees. He could see her bare feet. They were small and white and shapely. She asked, “Does this mean you will give up your ambitions?”
“No, no!” cried Basil. “I am more determined than ever.”
“I am glad you have no intention of living on your wife’s bounty.” Helena gave him the benefit of an open scrutiny. “I have already made some moves in the hope you would remember your promise. We have important connections at the imperial court. You see, Simon’s appearance before Nero was a great success, and at this moment he is the most talked-of man in Rome.” She paused and looked at him with a smile that said, How happy it will make me if I can be of help to you. “The Emperor has been told about you. If you still desire it, you can be taken to him.”
Basil hesitated and then shook his head. “I have every intention of striving for a career. But not by the favor of the Emperor. I have other matters to attend to while I am here, and there will not be time to seek favor at the court of Nero. Things press at home, at Antioch. My stay here must be a brief one.”
“I was afraid of this.” Helena sat in deep thought for several moments and then clapped her hands together. “I have been very thoughtless. You must have a cup of wine.” She gave instructions to the maidservant who answered the summons. “As soon as you have quenched your thirst, I shall have more to say.”
When the servant returned with a flagon that awakened memories in his mind, Helena insisted that he bring a chair and sit near her while he quaffed it. Her eyes had achieved a soft and dreamy look. “Is the wine to your taste?” she asked.
Basil, in a defensive mood, was thinking: “This will be a test. Will it have the same effect on me as that other time? Luke laughs at love potions and says it is the good or bad in one that counts. Well, now we shall see.”
He took a deep draught. It was cool and refreshing and it sent a tingle through his veins. He kept his eyes fixed on his companion. Helena had turned and was gazing out of the window at the inner court, where many activities were in progress if they could judge by the sounds that reached them. Her profile seemed more delicate than he had remembered it to be. She brought her head back and leaned close toward him.
“You will make a great mistake if you let this chance slip. The Emperor is the vainest man in the world: If you did a model of him that he liked, he would shower you with favors.”
She sat in silence for a moment, studying him closely. She was making it clear that her emotions had been stirred. Her eyes had acquired a suggestion of moisture and she was breathing hard. She reached out her hands to him impulsively.
“Basil! Are you not glad to see me? It makes me happy to sit here so close to you.” Then she began to whisper. “Oh, I understand. I can see it has been made hard for you. You will forget your ambition. You will forget—me.”
When he gave no indication of responding she allowed her hands to drop to her lap. Her eyes told him that his coldness had hurt her.
“The forgetfulness is starting, Basil. What else could I expect? But I wish you would believe me when I say I put your interests above everything. It is the truth. I want you to become a great man. Whether it is with my help or not does not matter. Basil, that much you must believe.”
“I know your generosity. You have given me proof of it.”
“You are not drinking your wine. Can you not wait long enough for that before rushing away on your other concerns?”
Basil raised the familiar flagon to his lips again. “It is good wine. I hope, Helena, that what I have said will not make you think me ungrateful.”
There was a knock on the door, and then it swung in to reveal the tall figure of Idbash. He looked at them with an interest he made no effort to conceal.
“Clients are arriving,” he said to Helena. “The widow from the provinces is here. A poet who needs some stimulation of his muse is coming. A senator is on his way; the senator, mistress. I can get no response from —from the one who sits on the rooftop. He waved me away angrily and said you would see them.”
“They will not like it,” declared Helena. “They want to see Simon himself. Our trade will fall off if he keeps this up.”
“The senator will be pleased,” commented Idbash with an ugly curl of the lips that was meant for a smile.
“I will attend to them. Get a cup of wine for the widow. Plain wine with a dash of some drug to make it taste strange. She will never know the difference.”
When the long nose of Idbash had seemed to fold up and disappear and the door had closed on his narrow, arched back, Helena rose slowly to her feet. “You must return. It is so important. Where are you staying?”
“With an old man who keeps a sort of inn.”
She asked in a tone that contain
ed a trace of sharpness, “Are the people there Christians?” Not waiting for an answer, she went on: “Keep away from all of them! They are falling into the ill will of the Emperor. One of the reasons that Simon is in such high favor is because he is throwing doubts on the miracles of Jesus. This delights Nero. Basil, this is most important. It would not be safe for you to be associated with them in any way.”
He rose to his feet, and they faced each other for a moment. A hurt look had come into her eyes. Then she yielded again to impulse and, taking one of his hands, pressed the palm of it against her face.
“The pretty little boy who came to the house of my master will not forget the poor little slave girl?” Her voice seemed choked with emotion. “Oh, Basil, Basil, do not forget me! Do not put me out of your mind!”
She turned so suddenly then that the linen skirt twirled about her, allowing him a brief glimpse of white ankles. The door closed after her.
On leaving the room Helena sought Idbash. “That man I have left,” she said in low and urgent tones. “Have him followed. I must know where he is living.”
The young Samaritan’s lips curled up in another unpleasant suggestion of a smile. Seeing his hesitation, she caught him by the sleeve.
“Listen to me, Long-ears!” she cried. “You will do as I say. I want you to send the most reliable man in the house. Attend to it at once unless you want me to have you driven out on the streets! You would not like it, my Idbash. The streets of Rome hold out no welcome to a man who has quarreled with his master.”
The Silver Chalice Page 46
