The Silver Chalice

by Thomas B. Costain

  A squat, black-browed man, even more vainly attired than Petronius and loaded with jewelry, appeared at the Emperor’s left side and began to speak in his ear.

  “We can make good use of this plan, O Caesar,” he whispered. “It may drag the leaders of this troublesome sect out of their holes. You know how numerous they are becoming and how secretly they spread their nets.”

  “You are right, Tigellinus.” Nero continued to press his nervous fingers on the bare expanse of his chin. “They are all around us. They delve in the ground like moles. They frighten me because I do not know what they want. Yes, let us bring them out of their holes. Question this fellow, Tigellinus, as to how he wants to have his test.”

  The captain of the Praetorian Guard stepped forward and faced the magician. “Simon of Gitta,” he said in a tone of authority, “tell us who these leaders of the Christians are.”

  “Their acknowledged leader is here, a man of Galilee, a poor fisherman. His name is Simon, but he is called Peter. It is said of him that wherever his shadow falls the sick become well and the lame walk. They say he raised a woman named Dorcas from the grave at Lydda. He is a humble man, but he has a bold plan in his head: to make Rome the center of the Christian church. Summon this Simon called Peter to appear before Caesar and give proof of these powers he claims to have. Challenge him to raise the dead.”

  The close-set eyes of Tigellinus were fixed on him with deep calculation. “And what can you do, Simon of Gitta? Can you also raise the dead?”

  Simon lifted his arms again. “This I declare before Caesar and all those who sit at his feet. No man can bring the dead back to life. I, Simon of Gitta, cannot do it. I defy this boastful man Peter to come forward and perform this feat.”

  “What, then, do you propose to do?”

  Simon made his answer directly to the Emperor. “Can men fly like the birds of the air? The Jews have belief in a band of spirits they call angels. These angels are of great strength and they appear and disappear in the sky. They have wings more powerful than those of the strongest eagle. It may be that there are angels and that they can fly. But can men fly?”

  Nero turned to Petronius on his left. “Tell me, Petronius, have men ever flown?”

  The leader of the party of sophistication seemed to take small interest in the matter. “Stories have been told of men flying, but I don’t believe them to be true. It is certain that no one has ever seen them fly.”

  “I will fly!” cried Simon. “This is what I propose. I shall build a tower, a tower higher than any building in Rome. I will build it wherever is deemed best. If Caesar gives his august consent, I should like to place it in the imperial gardens so that the ruler of all the world could watch what I shall do without any trouble. From the top of this high tower I shall launch my body into space and fly out over Rome.” He paused and looked about him with glittering eyes. “I defy Simon called Peter to fly as I shall fly, in the sight of all Rome, high up in the sky with no wings to support me and naught but the divine spirit that animates my body.”

  The young Emperor had listened to this discussion with every evidence of excitement. He was leaning forward to watch Simon, his eyes seeming to protrude from his face more than ever, his hands gripping his knees tightly.

  “Build your tower, Simon Magus!” he cried. “Build it here in the gardens of my palace and do it quickly. I shall wait for this contest with the greatest impatience.”

  5

  Still busy at his task, Basil became aware that the behavior of Caesar’s guests was getting progressively worse. Incredible things were happening throughout the banqueting hall, actions and caresses that none save the most hardened could contemplate without shame. It became impossible for him to concentrate on his work in such an unhealthy atmosphere. Collecting everything into the blue cloth, he made his way out. After several false starts he found his way back to the hall that led to his room.

  He discovered, to his surprise, that a light was burning in the bedroom. Pausing in the doorway, he looked about him. A small degree of illumination was supplied by an oil lamp on a bronze stand, and the corners of the apartment were in shadow. Back in the shadows he saw Helena watching him intently.

  “I have been waiting for you,” she said.

  Basil walked slowly into the room, a sense of extreme uneasiness tugging at him. He had hoped he would not have to see her again. Nothing but embarrassment and ill feeling could result, he was sure, from this seemingly clandestine encounter.

  Helena’s eyes were full of mystery and enticement. She raised an arm in a gesture of invitation, and the sleeve of her palla slipped back to the shoulder. It was a beautiful arm she thus displayed, although it seemed perhaps a shade less slender than when he first met her in Jerusalem.

  “Did you see me below?” she asked.

  He answered that he had not. Simon had been always in his range of vision, but he had caught no glimpse of her.

  “I could see you,” she said. “You were very diligent. I watched you all the time. My companion charged me with a lack of interest in him. It was quite true. I took no interest in him at all.”

  “I stayed as long as I could.” Basil placed the cloth on the table and drew out the still damp model of the Emperor’s head. This he placed beside the lamp. Helena came closer to the light and studied it.

  “Do you realize,” she said, “that this is the first time I have seen any of your work?” She seemed to draw in her breath. “The likeness is startling. You almost expect him to speak. Or sing.” A further moment of intent examination followed. “I wonder if he will like it. There is never any predicting what he will think. Or do—or say.”

  The sense of uneasiness had been growing in Basil’s mind each moment. Every sound in the hall made him start and look about him. He did not want it said that he had taken this beautiful and dangerous woman to his room.

  Helena noticed his distress. “It must not be thought we are keeping a tryst here. See, my apprehensive one? I shall remove the danger.”

  She reached out an arm to the lamp. It was a covered lamp, made of clay, and the wick was tightly enclosed. Her fingers snuffed out the flame expertly, and darkness descended on the room.

  “It will be better this way, dear Basil.” Her voice sounded farther away, although he had not heard her move. “I am sitting over here. On the couch, your virgin couch. Come, there is room for you. We can sit at our ease and talk in such very low tones that no one will hear us.”

  He remained where he was. “There are things I must say. Will you listen and make an effort to understand?”

  There was a long moment of silence. Then she said, in a quite different tone, one that seemed to have divorced itself from personal feeling for the moment: “Before we talk—about ourselves—there is something I want to discuss with you. Did you hear what Simon said to Caesar?”

  As Simon had spoken in the Latin tongue, Basil had not understood a word of the discussion. There had been no one near him to whom he could turn for enlightenment, and so he had continued to work through the episode. This he explained to her, and she told him briefly of the nature of Simon’s proposal.

  “I think Simon has gone mad,” she said in conclusion. “There was a purpose in what he said tonight; an insane purpose, I am afraid. You understand, I am sure, that there is no doubt about his ability to fly from the top of the tower. We have seen to that. There are ways.” She paused, and he could hear her draw in her breath as though she were excited and angry. “But does he intend to make use of what we have made? I have doubts, and it disturbs me so much that I think I shall go mad too. I am afraid he thinks he can fly without any help.”

  “None save Jesus and the holy angels can fly,” declared Basil.

  Helena was even more emphatic in her opinion on this point. “No one can fly. If this insanity grows on him I must be prepared to take steps. I have no intention of standing by and seeing him throw everything away. He can make a great fortune here, for himself and for me. But what distur
bs me even more is the fear of being involved in a failure. If he is going to have this test with the Christians, he must win—or face the anger of Caesar. I do not want to be within close distance of the imperial temper if Simon loses.”

  “He will lose!” declared Basil urgently. “God will see to that. Jehovah will not allow this wicked purpose to succeed. You must leave at once. Get away while there is time.”

  “There is another course I can take. If Simon does not come to his senses, he can be exposed. I am prepared to do this if necessary, to go to the Emperor and tell him that Simon will lose if he is allowed his own way. Or I could go to the Christian leaders and tell them everything—about the device we have finished.”

  Basil found it hard to believe that she was prepared to betray her master in this way. Simon had raised her from the lowest level, he had educated her, he had provided her with the chance to cultivate her capacities of mind as well as her beauty.

  “Helena!” he protested. “You cannot be serious. You must not think of betraying your benefactor.”

  “My benefactor?” She indulged in a bitter laugh. “You are innocent in the ways of the world. Do you not suppose I have paid a heavy price for everything this scheming Samaritan has done for me? I owe him nothing. Nothing at all. But that is not the point. I am convinced he is going mad. He talks strangely, and there is a glitter in his eyes that makes me shiver. Why should I have to share in the consequences of his folly?”

  “Why do you tell me this?”

  “Because I want you to understand. Also, I may need your assistance. The time may come when I shall want the Christian leaders to be told. But,” she went on quickly, “I do not want to make any move yet. There’s still a chance he can be brought to his senses. There is a suggestion I would feel safe in taking to the Emperor, that I do the flying instead of Simon. Oh yes, I could do it. I understand how to use this device we have made. Better than he does, perhaps. Why should there not be a great woman magician?”

  “Now I suspect you of being mad.”

  “My mind has never been clearer or more sure. There are things, of course, that I could not do but that are easy for Simon because of the strength in his arms and his power of endurance; but there are others I could do much better. I could fly better. Basil, I could fly as beautifully as these curious creatures called angels in which, I suspect, you hold belief. And yet I am afraid of heights. My flesh cringes when I think of plunging off the top of that tower. It would be like dying a hundred deaths, but—I would do it!”

  “Put such thoughts out of your head!”

  “Do you not see,” she said, “that I would have something to offer the public that no magician has ever had? Beauty and seductiveness. I could put romance and glamor into magic instead of dread and terror alone. Oh, there would be something of terror also.”

  “Helena, you frighten me. They would take you out and stone you to death as a witch.”

  “Has a beautiful witch ever been stoned to death?” He heard her catch her breath in a light laugh. “They reserve that for the old ones and the ugly ones.”

  Then her voice changed and he could tell she was disturbed and less sure. “But perhaps you do not think me beautiful. I do not believe you do because you are still standing over there. And here is a place waiting for you beside me in the darkness. Basil, listen to me. Carefully, if you please. Because you are acting so strange and cold, I am compelled to make a confession. I have given you love potions. Twice. Did you have any suspicion of it?”

  “I wondered about it.”

  “I wanted so much to win your devotion. I am going to tell you everything. They were the most powerful potions ever made. It was all in accordance with the secrets that Simon possesses. The ingredients were carefully prepared and they were mixed with the wine in the most exact proportions. The words were intoned over them to start the spell. I observed every care. Not a strand of hair on my head was tangled with another. I wore nothing but linen that fell in straight lines without any twisting or knotting. I wore no shoes. I carried both flagons to you myself, clasped tightly in my hands because I hoped the love I had for you would flow from the tips of my fingers into the wine and that you would come to feel the same way about me.

  “Are you saying to yourself that the potions failed? No, Basil, they did not fail. It is becoming clearer to me every moment while you stand over there alone that they failed with you but—I am afraid the spell worked, even though it was in a different way. It recoiled and made me the victim. I became the captive myself.”

  She had forgotten the need for caution and was using a tone that suggested hysteria. “Basil, I have told you everything because I long for—for at least a share of your devotion. Has it made no difference? Are you determined to be cold and aloof and to stay so far away from me? Has not my humble confession made you want to come closer? There is just enough room for us to sit side by side.” She said nothing more for a moment. “It seems I have marked my power of attraction for you too high. You do not move. You have nothing to say. Does this mean you want me to leave?”

  “Yes. I want you to leave.”

  He struggled with the words he had been rehearsing in his mind. “Helena, I want you to understand this: that a lifetime of striving would not pay back what I owe to my wife and to the memory of her grandfather, who did so much for me. My release from slavery, my chance to succeed, my peace of mind, my opportunity for love and happiness; all this I owe to them. Even if I did not love my wife, I would rest under an obligation to her for the rest of my life. But I do love her. I love her so much that her image will fill my heart as long as I live. I love her so much that I do not want to be responsible for bringing any shadow of doubt or suffering into her sweet eyes.”

  No sound came from Helena. He reached out in the darkness, and his hands encountered the lamp. Beside it stood a lighter. It was a rather complicated device, but he succeeded in fitting the laurel rod into the soft column of ivywood and in giving a spin to the bow. There was a quick spark, which fell into the receptacle for the tinder, a mixture of dried mushrooms and charred canvas. The tinder caught fire at once and he raised it to the wick of the lamp.

  Helena had left, he found. He did not know whether she had waited long enough to hear what he had said.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  1

  SEPTIMUS RULLIANUS looked at the bust of Nero on which Basil had worked unremittingly for three days and then repeated the comment Helena had made. “I wonder if he will be pleased with it. It is remarkable, I think, but it has a squint of villainy about it. You have given him the exact suggestion of animal cunning that animates the august countenance. Still, there’s a hint of genius about the face as well, and the Caesarian eyes may detect it; he is sharp that way. Well, I shall take it for his inspection, and then we’ll know. My advice to you is to go outside in the meantime and enjoy the only good thing about this smelly, rundown, hagridden rabbit hutch—the beauty of the gardens.”

  Before following this advice Basil sought out Darius, who had been one of the few recommended to him by Selech the Great. Darius was the director of palace amusements, and Basil located him in a large and airy room on the ground floor which, he concluded, had once served as a state apartment. It was now tenanted by active young men with the arms of gorillas and the legs of race horses. They were swinging on ropes from the ceiling and hurtling through the air from one rung to another or were throwing double flip-flops and tossing each other about with abandon. There were jugglers keeping swords and metal disks and porcelain plates in the air, and dancers going through complicated gyrations.

  Darius, who was as bald as a roc’s egg, talked to Basil of his troubles. “Caesar is hard to please,” he said. “He wants something new all the time. The last time I used acrobats he said to me: ‘By Tiberius’—he always calls on his ancestors, by Augustus, by Claudius, by Caligula, and this time it was Tiberius—‘by Tiberius, I hate acrobats. They have faces like pigs. I would rather watch wrestlers who have great bel
lies of suet. Take these acrobats out and crack their empty skulls against the nearest wall.’ Fortunately he still likes jugglers, and I happen to have a fine corps of them. He likes dancing, and that is a great difficulty, for the art of the dance has fallen on evil days in Rome since Cicero said, ‘No sober person dances.’ It is all professional and it is very dull and sober. They act out scenes from history in pantomime. Look at them over there in that corner. Did you ever see anything more stilted and stupid?”

  Basil looked in the direction indicated and said: “There is one dancer who isn’t stilted and stupid. That girl.” She had attracted his attention at once, because in a group of dusky companions her hair was like moonlight. Her eyes were blue, he thought, and she was dancing with a gaiety the others lacked.

  “That is Juli-Juli,” said the director. “I grant you that she is different, and I have great hopes for her. No Roman-born woman dances professionally, and we have to depend on men entirely, but it happens that Juli-Juli has foreign blood and is allowed to—to demean herself in this way. How fortunate it is! She will be a great success when she is introduced.” He raised his voice. “Juli-Juli, come here!”

  The girl came to a stop, poised herself for a moment on her naked toes, and then floated over to where they stood. She smiled at Darius (Basil had been right about her eyes; they were a startling blue) and said something in soft slurring tones. The director of entertainment regarded her with an affectionate twinkle in his eyes.

  “I want you to dance for this young man. He won’t be able to speak to you because he does not know our language.”

  The girl gave Basil an intent glance. “I am sorry I cannot talk with the young man, master. He looks very nice.”

  “He is very nice. But he is married to a beautiful wife and, moreover, he is a very serious young man. There is only one fault I have to find in you, Juli-Juli: you are not as serious as you ought to be. I even suspect you are quite a flirt.”