The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  3

  After her departure from the room Basil lifted the flagon and drank the wine to the last drop. Then he began to laugh.

  “Luke was right. To believe in love potions is an absurdity. I have finished this one and it has had no effect on me at all. She gave it to me with a purpose; I am certain of that, but I am equally certain that the purpose has failed. I shall never see her again and I have no regrets about it. I never want to see her.”

  He replaced the flagon and made his way to the door. “That other time it was my own evil instincts that made her attractive to me,” he thought. “I must face the truth. There is evil in me and I allowed it to come out. But thanks to the wisdom of my wife, I am now cured of that particular evil.”

  He left the busy house of Simon on jubilant feet. He was happy, so very happy over the discovery he had made that he wanted to shout out to the world about it. He had come to the realization that he was in love with his wife!

  “How could I have been so blind?” he demanded of himself with a feeling of chagrin for what now seemed to him a monumental lack of discernment. “My Deborra is sweet and loyal and brave. Each time I saw her I grew more conscious of her loveliness. But I allowed myself to look at someone else. I allowed this other one to stay in my mind and so I could not enter with a whole heart into my marriage with Deborra.” He stood still and looked up earnestly at the blue sky above him. “I thank Thee, O Lord, that my eyes have been opened at last.”

  It was a beautiful day. A touch of fall was in the air, and he stepped out briskly, conscious of a new sense of well-being as well as jubilation over the change that had come about inside himself. How wonderful it would be, he thought, if Deborra were here with him! They would join hands, perhaps, as they had done that day when she threw the stone at the Roman soldiers and they had raced for their lives through the Valley of the Cheesemakers. He wished so much to have her with him for his first clear look at the great city of the Caesars that it was like a physical pain.

  “How wise you were, my Deborra,” he said aloud. People passing in the street turned to stare at him. A solid citizen, wearing his toga with an air of importance, stopped and said in a bitter voice: “These crazy foreigners! Our great city is filled with them. It is being ruined.”

  Basil continued his train of thought, but he was careful to keep it to himself. “My sweet and wise Deborra asked me to see Helena with new eyes,” he thought. “I have done so, and she has become a shadow of the past. But that is not all. I am seeing everything with new eyes. Myself, my future, my work. And Rome! I am able to look at this city and see things that were hidden from me before. The whole world is new and the life we shall live in it, my wife and I, will be full of happiness and, I hope, achievement. And all this comes to me as I make use of these new eyes.

  “But most of all I see you, my Deborra, with new eyes. I see your fine white brow; your own eyes, which are so understanding and so very bright and lovely; your mouth, which I have kissed once, and once only, and that a fleeting one that we allowed ourselves to please an old prince from Seen. I shall hurry back to you on feet burning with impatience, my wife, and I shall spend the rest of my life making up to you for my blindness in the past!”

  He had reached the entrance to the Forum Romanorum. It was filled with people and pulsing with the continuous drama that the life of Rome generated. He came to a stop and said to himself, “I don’t care if they think I am mad. I cannot keep all this inside myself any longer.” Raising his voice, he shouted, “Deborra, I love you, I love you, I love you!”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  1

  Basil was ushered into an anteroom that had something of the appearance of a temple because of its high ceiling supported on pillars of the darkest variety of tufa. What caught his eye at once, however, was a display of shields propped at intervals along the walls. They were uniform in size, but each one was painted a different color. Despite the resplendent newness of them, they looked what they were: war shields for legion soldiers to carry into battle, being very long and obviously of great strength and weight.

  A bald-headed man with a parrot nose and a hint of the rodent in his eyes planted himself flat-footed in the path of the visitor.

  “What do you come for?” he demanded. “To ask a favor?”

  Basil nodded his head. “I come to ask a favor of Christopher who is called Kester of Zanthus. He has granted me a hearing at this hour.”

  “I granted you the hearing, young man,” said the assistant. “I granted it on my own authority, which is considerable, I may tell you. You see me here with a pen in my hand, but if you think I am a mere clerk you are wrong. As wrong as Pompey. But now I must tell you this: seeing that you ask favors, you may as well turn on your heels and walk out again.”

  “But——”

  The assistant interrupted him with a wave of his hand. “I am as hard as these shields,” he said with an air of satisfaction. “It is my inclination always to refuse things, to say no to callers, to knock down rather than to help up. But compared to the man in there”—he motioned over his shoulder with his thumb in the direction of an inner door—“I am as soft as pulp, I am a weak giver-in, I am a fair mark for beggars.”

  “But,” said Basil in a tone of distress, “but, surely, I am to be allowed to state my request.”

  The clerk considered the point with a judicial squint. “Well,” he said finally, “I will go this far. I will ask the man in there.”

  He left the room, closing the inside door after him. On his almost immediate return, he gave his knobby head a reluctant bob of assent. “You are to go in when he calls. But I must give you warning. The man in there is in a very bad humor. He will be short and ugly with you. Do not expect anything else.”

  Basil had employed the interval by examining the shields and had made a discovery that puzzled him. He looked inquiringly at the assistant. “May I ask a question?”

  “I do not promise to answer it. No information can be given out about army supplies.”

  “I have noticed that each shield in the room has a name painted on it, a different name for each one. I cannot help wondering why.”

  The assistant’s eyes began to glow with mingled feelings of importance and gratification. Although there was no one else in the long high room, and no echo of footsteps from the stone-flagged hall, he glanced about him with an extravagant air of caution. Then he put the tip of a forefinger to his lips and winked at Basil.

  “The man in there thought of it,” he whispered. “It was given out that new shields were needed for the legions in Britain after the terrible time they had fighting those painted barbarians and the wild women who dressed themselves in black and fought harder than the men. Contractors buzzed about these buildings like flies. He”—motioning again with his thumb—“sat in there alone for two days and thought about it. No one was allowed to see him. He roared at me with rage if I put my head inside the door. And then”—the clerk’s eyes began to gleam—“he came forth with an idea. Young man, it was nothing short of genius. He said to the government buyers, ‘What you must do is make these new shields a means of adding to the pride of the troops.’ ”

  Basil looked his surprise. “I thought that Roman soldiers were superior in every way to all others.”

  The bald-headed man shook an accusatory finger in his face. “They are! Make no mistake about that. But do you know that they are always fighting against odds? That they are always outnumbered? It is the rule to have no more than two legions in any one theater of war. Twelve thousand men, and sometimes they face armies of one hundred thousand. They have to be the greatest soldiers in the world, but also they must have confidence in themselves. Is that clear to you?”

  “You have made it very clear.”

  The assistant nodded his head several times. “The man in there came forth with two ideas, in fact. The first was that the shields should be given a more rounded form so that loaded javelins could be carried in the hollow. Do you know about this ne
w loaded javelin? No, I was certain you would not know. Well, they were first tried in the Illyricum campaigns and were so successful that it was decided to make them stock equipment. They weigh ten pounds and are sure death to an opponent at any distance within thirty yards. Five of them can be carried in the hollow of these new shields.

  “But,” he went on excitedly, “his second idea was even better. Build up the pride of the individual soldier by having a different color for each company of a hundred and have the name of each man printed on the shield he will carry.”

  “A remarkable idea indeed.”

  Basil’s tone had carried enough sincerity to satisfy the pride of the assistant. The forefinger the latter speared at the visitor expressed triumph. “The result of these ideas hatched in the mind of the man in there,” he cried, “was that we received the whole order. Twelve thousand shields to be delivered within three months. The colors have already been selected for each century. One hundred and twenty different shades, think of that! The names are to be lettered as fast as the lists can be sent to us. More orders will come to us later because they are bound to want the same results in all the theaters of war.”

  “Send him in,” called a deep and reverberating voice from behind the inner door.

  2

  The owner of the deep and reverberating voice proved to be a man of no particular size at all, except for his head, which was very large. If the head of Kester of Zanthus had been used as a boulder and shot out from one of the siege machines that he had on occasion sold for use by Roman armies, it would, without any doubt, have made a crack in any wall. It was, moreover, equipped with a broad and intelligent brow and it was surrounded with a thatch of reddish hair peppered with gray. On one side of the table behind which he sat was a platter with broken bits of bread and meat, on the other side a huge charger with every kind of fruit.

  “Who are you?” he demanded in a tone that suggested the rumble of an approaching storm.

  “My name is Basil, son of the deceased Ignatius of Antioch.”

  “Basil, son of Ignatius,” repeated the contractor. “Ignatius was once my best friend. I was a witness at your adoption, young man. But wait a moment; there was a story I heard about that.” He paused and then burst out with a roar like a beating of cymbals and drums. “That sniveling, slavering Hiram of Silenus, for whom I never had anything but contempt, lied about your adoption in court after Ignatius died. His testimony was accepted by a magistrate of the same base caliber, and you were denied your rightful inheritance.”

  Basil nodded to confirm this. “I was declared a slave and sold to a silversmith.”

  “That, too, I heard. I intended to take some action at the time. But”—his voice died down to a low bass mutter, as though the storm were receding—“I was very busy and it happened so far away. The result was that I did nothing. And so you are the young man who was treated so badly.”

  “Yes, worthy Christopher. My freedom was purchased three months ago and I have been reinstated as a citizen. My freedom I owed to Joseph of Arimathea, and I am now married to his granddaughter.”

  A look of keen interest had taken possession of the face of Kester of Zanthus. His burdensomely large head gave a nod. “It is gratifying to learn that your fortunes have taken a turn for the better. You have come to me, perhaps, with the thought of getting evidence for a new hearing?”

  “That is my purpose in coming.”

  The triangular-shaped eyes of the contractor studied him still more intently. After several moments of this he suddenly threw back his head and cried out “Maximus! Maximus! I know you are listening with your ear to the door. Come in at once, Pry-eye. I have need of you.”

  When the bald-headed man obeyed the summons by coming in breathlessly as testimony to his haste, the contractor instructed him to get parchment and pen.

  “Set down what I am going to say,” he ordered. “I shall want four copies. One for myself. One for this youth. One to be sent to the military commander in Antioch, who is a very close friend of mine. The fourth is to be for use here in Rome. Perhaps to be laid before the Senate. Are you ready?

  “I was one of five witnesses [dictated Kester of Zanthus] when Ignatius of Antioch purchased the son of Theron, a seller of pens, and adopted him as his son. The ceremony was carried out in accordance with the regulations as set forth in the Twelve Tables. Three times, in a clearly audible voice, the man Theron announced his willingness to sell his son. He did it with dignity and with such regret as might be expected; for a man who sells his son for adoption publicly proclaims that he himself has been a failure. The scales of brass were struck three times by the ingot of lead, wielded by one of the other witnesses, Hiram of Silenus by name. When the scales had been struck for the third time, Ignatius declared in the hearing of all that he accepted the boy as his son and his heir and that he would name him Basil after his own father. He gave us each a buckle of silver with five points and his own name and the boy’s inscribed on the back, as has become usual in adoptions. I am wearing my buckle as I set this down.

  “We then shared in a magnificent meal of five courses and drank of the five finest wines. There was much talk of the intentions of Ignatius for his new son. Ignatius said that he did not desire his son to follow him in his trading. He desired instead that the boy should devote himself to his great talent. Theron, who impressed me as a man of fine feelings, talked wisely and well, but at the end wept into his wine cup because he would never see his son again.

  “I give these details to demonstrate how full and clear is my recollection of the events of the day. It has been brought to my attention that, after the death of Ignatius, his sole surviving brother brought suit, claiming that the boy had been sold to Ignatius as a slave. The only witness who survives besides myself, the afore-mentioned Hiram, swore at the hearing that the ceremony had not been one of adoption. Against this perjured evidence I set forth my own testimony and hereby declare Hiram of Silenus to have deliberately perverted the truth.

  “To all whom this concerns, Greetings.”

  When the bald-headed man had withdrawn to make the copies of the statement, Kester of Zanthus interested himself in the food in front of him, helping himself to a luscious pear.

  “You were not at your own ceremony of adoption,” he remarked. “Nothing was said about it at the time, but I wondered.”

  “I ran away,” explained Basil. “I loved my real father and did not want to leave him, even to become the son of a rich man. Of course I soon came to love my adopted father also.”

  “It does you credit,” declared Kester, engulfing the pulpy side of the pear with one bite. “Your real father was a man of intelligence. It was not his fault that the selling of pens was such an unrewarding occupation. Where did you go when you ran away?”

  “I went to the waterfront and hid myself in a warehouse cellar under a pile of coal.”

  “I think,” said the contractor, “that under the circumstances I might have done the same.”

  3

  Basil returned to Subura in a mood of great jubilation. His copy of the statement crackled under his tunic, and this was all the assurance he needed that he would soon be restored to his proper station in life. His head was packed with rosy-tinted dreams. He would persuade Deborra to move to the white palace on the Colonnade where he had been raised. He would summon back Chimham and make a place for him, a post befitting so able a trader and the husband of so many wives. He might form an alliance of some kind with Adam ben Asher.

  “How pleased Deborra will be!” he thought. “I will no longer be an ex-slave. It will be legally established that I never was a slave. Not”—with an affectionate smile—“that she ever showed any concern about my standing.”

  After he had passed through the confusion and noise and stenches of Subura and had turned into the winding road that led up toward the inn, he became aware that Cephas was climbing the steep grade ahead of him, leaning on the arm of a younger man than himself.

  Cephas had
not been seen about the inn for two days. When Basil had asked Old Hannibal about him the latter had been, he thought, somewhat evasive. “He comes. He goes. He is not here now.”

  “You say he goes. Where does he go? I do not understand this.”

  The proprietor had seemed very much disturbed at being thus pressed for information. “Do you not see that there is always danger?” he asked “There has been another man here. Asking questions. Looking around It seems that even we are under suspicion now and we thought we would be free of it. Steps must be taken because it is the same all over the city. The Christians know that danger hangs over them.” His wrinkled face reflected a state almost of panic. “This I may tell you. Cephas should not have gone away at this time because it is best for those who ask questions to think he is here all the time. But he felt it his duty.” His eyes met Basil’s and he nodded vigorously. “You do not know what a wonderful man he is. He wants to serve those about him. Sometimes I have risen before dawn and found him sleeping against the wall, and in his bed someone who had come asking for shelter. Half of the time he gives his food to beggars and goes without himself. He says he does not need food. Whenever he goes away I am filled with fear because sometime he will go away and not come back.” The proprietor looked about him anxiously to be sure that no one was within hearing distance. “Cephas is not what he seems. That much I may tell you. He is here for—a purpose. I do not like to see him work so hard, but he insists. He likes to serve; and also he believes that he should play his part here naturally.”

  Basil hurried his steps and came abreast of Cephas and his companion.

  “I have just seen my missing witness,” he said. “It was a most satisfactory talk I had with him.”