The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  Immediately the drummers went to work, the cymbals clashed, the bronze trumpets sounded a fierce, harsh note. Everywhere the slaves stood at attention beside their tables and fires, their eyes rolling with excitement. Each one had something to wave, a poker, a cleaver, a basting spoon. Demetrius, in a frenzy, jumped up and down on his platform and waved his hands, with their closely bitten nails, above his head. He shouted in a high voice: “The first course is going up! Great of the earth, prepare yourselves for it! Open thy mouth, O Caesar, the first course is ready for you!”

  3

  When Basil reached the banqueting hall of the Caesars, the guests of Nero were already stretched out on their couches. Their hands and feet had been laved with perfumed snow water, which slaves had carried about among the tables. A short prayer had been said to Jupiter and a pledge had been drunk from crystal wine cups, each drinker spilling a drop or two on the floor for the invisible lares.

  Basil was escorted by Septimus to a small table that, clearly, had been reserved for him. Although within twenty feet of the couch where Nero reclined, it was well off to one side and partially screened by a high bank of flowers. From this point of vantage he could see everything. He stole one glance at the Emperor, surprised to see how young he looked in spite of an early corpulence, and then found his eyes drawn to Poppaea beside the ruler. The new Empress was a vision of snow-white skin and delicate tintings of pink, of reddish hair that glinted and crinkled under the lights in the tall candelabra above her, of shoulders slender and milky in a white silk palla edged with blue.

  He opened the blue cloth bag on the table and fumbled at the strings, his eyes still fixed on this rose-leaf beauty who was already being called the Wicked Empress.

  “Am I to begin at once?” he whispered. There was no answer. Turning, he found that Septimus had already withdrawn.

  The second course was being brought in with as much fanfare as the first one. Acrobats capered ahead of the procession, turning handsprings and somersaults. The musicians were piping and sawing, the drummers drumming madly. A table stretched its full length of forty feet in front of the Emperor’s couch, covered with gold cloth and piled high with flowers at intervals. One of the marching chefs deposited a wild boar’s head in the center of the table and started flames crackling about it while his fellows paraded before the ruler of the world with dishes for his inspection and selection: capons and ducks and peacocks (with their tails spread out in full glory), wild game, rare fishes highly seasoned, young pigs roasted whole, great loins of beef with pink flanks and rib bones dripping with fat, quarters of stag and roebuck.

  Nero took no interest in the food. Some remains from the first course were still about him on platters, but he had eaten little. Occasionally he cracked off the head of a paste egg and scooped out the contents, but it was done with no enthusiasm. Caesar lacked appetite and, as those about him noted with distress, he most clearly was suffering from boredom.

  Basil, at his solitary table behind the banked flowers, satisfied his hunger with a slice of beef, on which a few drops of the new and pungent garum had been sprinkled, and a concoction of preserved figs served with damson plums. He did not linger over the meal and, at the finish, laved his hands in a dish of scented water brought to him by a slave whose eyes were never raised from the floor. After a deep pull at his wine cup (how could any wine be so wonderful!) he instructed the slave to remove all the dishes, and then spread out the contents of the blue cloth in the space thus provided.

  A sense of satisfaction took possession of him. He hummed softly to himself as he set to work.

  The head of Caesar was an immediate challenge. Under a mass of coarse red curls the protuberant eyes of the world’s master stared out, avid for admiration, watchful, as though underneath he lacked any sense of assurance. His nose was ill-formed and bulbous. The auburn beard had recently been shaved off (and the strands saved for posterity in a golden box embossed with pearls and precious stones), thus revealing the thick and puffy lips and the cruel but weak mouth. It was a face in which perplexity vied with savagery and the instincts of a mild youth were being submerged in the urgings of lust and ambition.

  Basil took no more than a moment of study of this rather frightening face in reaching a decision as to what he would do. A head such as this was not to be presented in the conventional Roman fashion, with blank eyes and stiffly formal hair. Instead he would show Caesar as a human being; exactly as he saw him, in fact, a clumsy hobbledehoy who was still capering like a wood sprite but was changing rapidly into an evil satyr. The imperial eyes, he decided, must be made to look out at life with uncontrollable eagerness; the nose and mouth must reveal the appetites that were growing in him. This might not be what Caesar wanted of him, but he must risk it. If the likeness already coming to life with the first pressure of his fingers proved displeasing to Nero’s pride, then he would betake himself away as quickly and unobtrusively as he could. No harm, he hoped, would have been done.

  It was not until he was well along with his work that he caught sight of Simon Magus. The great magician was sitting bolt upright in the center of the great banqueting hall and eating with an air almost of condescension. He had robed himself in black, and above this funereal garb his bony face looked sinister and withdrawn. The other guests had shunned the seats and couches immediately about him, and so he sat in an isolation that added to the effect he was creating.

  Watching him, while he allowed his hands to become idle momentarily, Basil recalled the scene in the House of Kaukben when the cord beneath the rug had been tugged and the vessel of water spilled. “He is crooked,” he thought, finding it hard not to laugh. The sinister quality of Simon was no more than a pose, but it happened to be a pose that was deceiving all of Rome.

  Up to this moment he had taken no interest in the company, but now he found himself glancing about in the hope of finding Helena. She was not to be seen, and this was not surprising, for there were several hundred people in the hall. He assumed that all the great of Rome had assembled to do honor to their young Emperor, having no way of knowing that the company was a peculiarly mixed one, that with the members of the old Roman families were the new rich who had risen through political activities and the manipulation of state contracts, as well as the younger group who were running after false gods, a gay and sophisticated set under the leadership of Petronius.

  It was not an edifying scene. The guests of Caesar were eating and drinking to excess, and license had been given full rein. They talked in shrill voices and laughed loudly and foolishly; they flirted and ogled. The men went prowling on feet that were unsteady and visited the couches where the youngest and prettiest of the ladies were ensconced, seating themselves beside the languid occupants and serving them solicitously. They offered wine cups to lips that were held up invitingly for more than the caress of the golden wine.

  Helena must be somewhere in the room. She would not have neglected the chance to be present on such an occasion, but Basil failed to see her. There was, he thought, a resentment of her absence in the stiff attitude of Simon. Was she languishing somewhere in the hall with a new admirer?

  Basil said to himself, “I am here to record the features of Caesar, not to watch the antics of his guests.” He turned his back with relief on the bacchanalian scene and kept resolutely at his task.

  4

  Nero was not drinking and he was doing no more than trifling with the luscious fruits and the rich tarts and cakes of the dessert. It was clear that he was finding the evening a dull one. His lips were gathered up in a pout, his low forehead wore a scowl, and his eyes found no pleasure even in the unruffled beauty of Poppaea. He looked about him with an air that said plainly, “These shallow worldlings, satisfying their gross appetites while divinity watches in disgust!”

  Finally the smoldering imperial eye came to rest on the oasis where Simon the Magician sat in silent solitude. An idea took possession of him.

  “Simon Magus!” he called.

  Simon rose f
rom his seat and bowed slowly three times from the waist.

  The company that filled the central part of the banqueting hall had lapsed at once into silence, but to overcome the sounds of revelry from the far parts the royal voice had to be raised to make itself heard.

  “Have you any more tricks to show us, O man of dark wiles and diabolic skills?”

  The days of study and consultation in the house on the Nova Via, the steady practicing with new assistants, the making of mysterious props had all been in preparation for two occasions; and this was one of them, a preliminary to the great display with which the Bad Samaritan planned to astound the world. Conscious of the hovering of destiny above him, the great magician took a few steps forward.

  “O Caesar,” he said, “I have words in mind rather than deeds. There is a discourse that should be addressed to your learned ear and to all these who sit about you. I desire to demolish certain misconceptions that are held on the subject of what is called magic. If I have your august permission to speak, I shall strive to say what must be said in a few words. And as I talk perhaps my hands will not forget their trade but will perform certain new and ingenious feats and conceits for your amusement.”

  His right hand had been extended in front of him in a rhetorical gesture. It was empty, as all those who sat close about him were in a position to know. But at this moment they saw a lighted candle suddenly appear on his open palm. Simon lowered his arm and looked at the flickering flame as though he himself was as much surprised as any of them. He glanced about him until his eyes settled on a corpulent senator who was in the act of lifting a wine cup to his mouth. With a gesture of unconcern the magician dropped the candle into the wine, where it was extinguished with a single flutter and hiss of sound.

  He had chosen his victim well. The senator spluttered at the indignity he had suffered but subsided when the whole room broke into laughter. Nero, startled, indulged in a slight chortle. Then he coughed and chortled again, this time on a higher note. His enjoyment continued to mount and expressed itself in a crescendo of sounds. Finally he threw back his head and gave way entirely to relish of the trick, exploding into a high neighing hysteria.

  Simon took a few more steps forward. “O Caesar,” he said, “it is believed that magic is all a matter of dexterity of the hand and of certain aids that the magician conceals about his person. What I shall speak of is a far different kind of magic, the dread powers that fall into the hands of any who dare break the seals of the sable books. I would speak of secrets that can be learned by probing into the high vaults of the unknown and of the strange divinity that enters the veins of the initiate.”

  He raised his arm in a gesture, and again a lighted candle appeared on the extended palm. A second time he simulated surprise and then crushed out the flame on the bare back of a female slave who was passing with empty dishes. The startled girl emitted a scream and dropped her burden on the floor. Again Nero went through the preliminary starts of choking sound and stammers of delight, rising into another outburst of uncontrolled laughter.

  “I spare her the hundred lashes she deserves for her clumsiness,” he said when speech was possible to him, “because she has made me laugh on an evening that has been barren of amusement.”

  Six times the lighted candles appeared from nowhere while the voice of the magician continued its discourse. He found ways to dispose of them that caused laughter. Between the outbursts the hall possessed itself in silence, all eyes fixed on the thin fingers of the Samaritan where the candles sprouted so mysteriously.

  A middle-aged man sat at Nero’s right hand. The top of his head was bald and as white as newly quarried marble. He had an intelligent dark eye in a plump face and he was attired with fastidious care.

  “He is a vile fellow, this Simon,” said the middle-aged man at this point, leaning closer to Nero, who was still nursing his amusement. “He is so very ugly that he makes my flesh creep. But this must be said for him: he is an artist.”

  “An artist?” The Emperor’s voice showed that this point of view came to him as a surprise. “Come, Petronius, you are leading up to one of your quips. A paradox, perhaps. You do not believe this fellow to be an artist. Can there be artistry in as low a trade as the making of magic?”

  “There is artistry,” declared Petronius, watching the thin streak of light in the green cymophane ring he was wearing, “in the building of a dry wall, in the flexing of a bow, in the concoction of a double-faced tart to tickle the palate of a Caesar and smear the cheeks of his greedy henchmen.” The leader of the party of sybarites raised his eyes to look across the floor at the magician. “Observe, O Caesar! Have you ever seen anything more like the black birds of death than this creature from the East in his severe robe and his face powdered to look like the bare bones of a skull? Everything he does, every movement of his body, has been carefully planned and timed. Consider how deftly he leads you first to wonder and then to laughter.”

  While Petronius whispered Simon continued to talk, but he had lost the attention of the Emperor. “He can put dread in your heart by the way he walks. His feet move like the feet of cruel, mythical birds, stalking, slinking, stealing up on you. There is a suggestion of evil in the way he curls up his toes. And see how he moves his arms. They are like shafts of tempered metal, and his hands are like the heads of serpents, poised and ready to strike.”

  “Yes, yes, Petronius,” said Nero, who was now watching Simon with eyes that had discovered in him new fascination. “As always, my Petronius, you are right. It amazes me how infallibly you detect these things.”

  What followed immediately made it seem possible that Simon had heard what they were saying. He changed his tactics and ceased to startle and amuse them with lighted candles. His hands, which had seemed to Petronius like the heads of serpents, justified the comparison by reaching out with the speed of a fang and whisking away the flowers that stood in the center of one of the tables. A snake with a coral band bound round its neck had been coiled beneath the bouquet. It raised itself and hissed at the startled occupants of the table. Simon pointed a finger at it, and the snake shriveled and disappeared. A moment later he stopped a waiter who was hurrying by with a covered dish. With a quick movement of his arm the Samaritan drew off the cover, and it was found that the dish contained not a Janus tart of rich plums or a cluster of sweetmeats, but the same snake with its identifying coral band and its flattened head darting viciously over the rim.

  Continuing his discourse, Simon paced about the floor, throwing guests into paroxysms of terror by discovering the snake in the folds of robes, under chairs, and once in the horn of a musician. Finally he came to the climax of the evening’s amusement by raising his eyes to a pillar, at the base of which sat a self-important politician and his fat wife. Following the direction of his glance, the company saw that the snake was beginning to slither down the pillar, its head thrusting out this way and that as it slowly writhed its way down.

  The pair below were unaware of what was going on and continued with what they had been doing, the husband drinking wine and the wife eating a bunch of grapes with exaggerated good manners. Every eye in the room was fixed on them by this time in delighted anticipation.

  Hearing a rustling sound finally, the wife looked up to find the head of the serpent directly above her. Her lips opened and she emitted a sound like a cork being drawn from a bottle. Then she toppled over, sprawling on the floor in a dead faint.

  Each time the snake had appeared Nero had gone through the process of mounting hysteria, culminating in wild peals of laughter, but at this point his sides heaved and he rolled on his couch in a perfect orgy of delight.

  Simon waited for the laughter to subside. After a glance at the figure of the woman lying unnoticed on the floor, her face pressed into the squashed grapes, he raised both hands in the air to compel the giggling, guffawing revelers to silence. Then he walked forward until he stood directly in front of the breathless Emperor.

  “O Caesar,” he said, “I offer
a suggestion for your august consideration, in due humility but with a conviction that much good would come of it. There is a test I desire to make.”

  “What is this test, Simon Magus?” asked Nero.

  The magician raised both of his arms in a passionate gesture. His face, carefully powdered as the observant eyes of Petronius had detected, turned even whiter. There was a fanatical gleam in his eyes.

  “A test of power, O Caesar!” he cried. “Match me against the Christians like gladiators in the Arena. I, Simon of Gitta, called the Magician, against these men who prate of humility but who say they can perform even as Jesus of Nazareth.”

  Nero leaned forward, his interest sharply aroused. “A match against the Christians?” he cried. “But how, how? What would be the nature of this match?”

  “Summon us before you to show what we can do. I have certain wonders to perform. Let them do these miracles of which we hear so much. You, O Caesar, to be the judge between us. I am weary of the din they raise. Wherever I go they say to me, ‘You, Simon, you are bold to stand up and make magic where Jesus of Nazareth performed His miracles. What great conceit is this you have of yourself,’ they ask. They call me the Bad Samaritan and they make mock of me. I shall not rest until I have proven to all mankind that Simon of Samaria can perform greater miracles even than their master who died on a cross at Jerusalem.”

  The Emperor’s fingers plucked at his chin as though he missed the auburn beard he had sacrificed to the shears of tradition a short time before. He turned an eye in the direction of Petronius.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Do you favor, my Petronius, this contest he desires so fiercely?”

  The sybarite did not seem much impressed. “It might prove amusing, O Caesar,” he said indifferently.