The Silver Chalice (31 page)

Adam gave him a final shake and let him go. He said, walking to the door with such vigorous strides that he scattered the accumulations of equipment that stood in his way, “You may have redeemed yourself for the harm you did before.”

“And now,” said Benjie, “there is another matter of which I shall tell you, the matter of an inheritance——”

An hour passed after Deborra entered her grandfather’s room and closed the door behind her. Adam ben Asher, having made certain necessary arrangements, paced about the hall, keeping his eyes fixed on the heavy oak barrier behind which his old master was spending his last moments. Luke went to the sanctuary and there found Basil hard at work on the design of the frame for the Chalice. The excitements of the morning had proven a stimulus, and he was making progress by the flickering light of the lamp.

The physician proceeded to tell him of the situation that had developed
as a result of the funds held by the Antioch banker. “Aaron will sail for Antioch to claim the money as soon as his father’s body has been laid in the sepulcher,” he said. “Adam is to take Deborra by land. It will be a race, a camel train against the sails of the ship. The camels they will use belong to Adam. Knowing that Aaron will not keep him a single hour after Joseph’s death, he has been secretly buying them for the house he will set up in opposition. I am told he has acquired the strongest and fastest camels in the whole world. In spite of his bark, which I allow is sharp and loud, Adam has a great heart. He is prepared to drive this fine fleet to the utmost in the race.”

Basil had suspended work to listen. He asked now when Adam would start.

“Within an hour of Joseph’s death. So much depends on getting to Antioch first that Deborra will not stay for the burial. It will almost break her heart not to follow her grandfather to the grave, but she understands the urgency and she is ready. You, my son,” went on Luke after a moment, “will not be left to the mercies of the dagger men. You are to leave the house with the camel train.”

“But how will I get by the guards around the house?”

“There is a plan. I cannot explain it now.”

Basil motioned to the clay model on which he was working. “Am I to go on with this?”

“Of course. Joseph has spoken to me several times of his confidence in you and his desire to have you finish the Chalice. He has been so concerned about it that he has kept a bag of gold under his pillow for the purpose. Deborra will bring it with her.”

Basil laid his work aside and threw a damp cloth over it. “And what of you?” he asked. “Do you go with us? The thought of separation from you is one I cannot abide. You have been to me everything my father was before he died. Nay, you have been much more, for you have given me spiritual guidance. I feel the future will be blank without you—without your kindness, your help and encouragement.”

The celebration of the slaves had ended with the arrival of Deborra, but for a time thereafter sounds of activity had been noticeable about the house. Now a complete silence reigned over the great establishment, a silence filled with the intensity of grief. His people waited in sorrow for the word that Joseph of Arimathea had come to the end of his long days. There was consciousness of this in the low tone of voice Luke employed in answering.

“What you have said makes me very happy, my son. I am going with you. Paul is to be sent to Caesarea to be tried before Felix. My place is by his side, but it will be a long time before he is led out from his cell for the hearing. A year at least, we are told.”

“What is to be done about the Cup?” asked Basil anxiously.

“It has been put in my charge and I shall make it my only care until we have taken it to a place where no hostile hands may touch it.” Luke continued to speak with sudden emphasis. “Paul is the voice of Christianity. He is carrying the teachings of Jesus to the whole world. He has always had his own group of helpers about him, but he could have done it all himself. We who have followed the trails of conversion with him have always known that he did not need us—Matthew or Mark or Luke, or any of the others. He can stand alone, that man of iron and fire. I, Luke, of my own free choice, shall stand beside him when his moment of trial comes. I earnestly hope to share in whatever his fate may be. But first there is the Cup to be taken care of, this one great reminder that Jesus came to us in the guise of a man, this sublime relic that someday may be so important to the faith. If we can get it out of this house, and out of Jerusalem, I shall go on with it to Antioch, where it may be kept in full safety.”

Luke then nodded his head at Basil and smiled warmly. “You have been behaving with discretion and courage. You saved Deborra from the consequences of her rashness, and since then you have been enduring great hardships without complaint. The one slip you made can easily be forgiven in the light of what you have done. I am not acquiring in my old age the prophetic vision, but this I do perceive—that your prospects are pleasant and bright. There is something back of what I am saying; something that I have no right to divulge.”

Basil looked at his hands, which were black and callused from the work he had been doing. “If I am to go with them, I must prepare myself. Would it be safe for me to go now to the washroom? I have fallen into the habit of waiting until after midnight, when no one could see me.” He shook his head in despair. “Living in this dark hole has made it impossible to keep myself clean. Could I have something better than the rough soap in the slave quarters? It makes little impression on my skin.”

The long confinement had done more than blacken his hands. It had put hollows under his cheekbones. There was the hint of a stoop in his shoulders owing to the low ceiling of the room. He looked weary of body and depressed in spirits. Luke studied him thoughtfully.

“There seems small need for concealment now,” said the latter after a moment. “It will be safe for you to return to the room you used before, and I will see there is plenty of hot water for you. While you bathe I will find what can be done about suitable clothes.”

“I have only the
colobium
in addition to what I wear. I should not speak of it with disrespect, for it is the badge of my freedom.”

“But a somewhat meager garment,” amended Luke, measuring him with his eyes. “And the material is of the plainest. I think we shall have to get something better.”

L
UKE AND HIS YOUNG PROTÉGÉ
, on their way to the room the latter had occupied before, visited the dining hall of the servants. They found it, to their surprise, the scene of considerable activity. The former slaves, who seemed content to remain in the house in the capacity of free servants, were decorating the walls with midsummer flowers, the red of poppies, the yellow of the ranunculus, the white of the earliest wild cyclamen that were being found around the edges of the Mount of Olives and in the Valley of Hinnom. Candelabra of many branches had been placed in the corners and were being stocked with the fat candles of bees-wax which the Romans had introduced into the country. At one end the women were erecting a canopy with rolls of white ribbon and were achieving something that bore a resemblance to a pond lily.

The two men did not pause to speculate on the meaning of these preparations. Their eyes went anxiously to the wall where the drinking cups were kept in full view.

“It is there,” said Luke. “In the exact position where I placed it. No one has touched it. Is it not strange that now it looks no different from the others?”

Half an hour later Basil emerged from a steaming bath. He was refreshed in body and somewhat more composed in spirit. His hands were white from vigorous and sustained scrubbing. He looked at them with satisfaction and said to himself, “Now I may feel some pride in myself again.”

Slipping the thin
colobium
over his shoulders, he walked to a window and looked out into the glare of early afternoon. Immediately beneath him
he could see the spot where he had stood with Deborra after their mad scramble through the Valley of the Cheesemakers.

“I knew I was falling in love with her,” he said to himself. “From the moment she threw the stone I began to see her in a new light. She was no longer just a young girl in the house with a ring of keys in her hands. She had shown a high spirit. No wood sprite ever ran with more grace. As we faced each other, her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed, she was lovely and eager and very sweet.” A conviction took form in his mind. “If I had declared myself then, she would have said yes to me.”

But almost immediately after that had come his meetings with Helena, and now he was utterly confused and unhappy. Why could he not banish the dark eyes of the magician’s assistant from his mind as thoroughly as he had rid himself of his belief that the evil in him was due to the presence of an alien spirit? It should not be difficult, because he saw matters in a clear enough light to realize that there was something furtive in his concern for the slave girl who had run away from the house of Ignatius. He was ashamed of the desires she roused in him, but they persisted nevertheless.

“It’s as though I had been drugged with a love potion,” he thought. This brought up a memory of the cup of wine he had imbibed so freely before Simon appeared on the scene and which had affected him in curious ways; but he dismissed immediately the possibility that it had any connection with the present state of his feelings. “I must not pamper my conscience a second time. The evil in me is not due to outside influences. I must be honest; it is a part of myself.”

Perhaps Deborra had found reason to forget that memorable moment when they had paused on the lip of the valley. She had thought only of her grandfather on her return an hour before. That, however, was natural enough; for grief is a consuming emotion, great enough to banish all others, because it is concerned with the irrevocable. Not a single glance had she cast about her in search of him as she came through the open door and traversed the long hall.

Luke returned to the room with a bundle of clothing, which he placed on the bed.

“I hope they will fit you,” he said. “Try them at once, for time presses on us. There is much to be done while Joseph still lives.”

Basil lifted the clothing. “This is handsome,” he said, feeling in his hands the cool linen of the tunic.

“I will explain about this raiment as you dress. There was a time when
Joseph was certain he would never be blessed with a child.” In his youth Luke had been a teller of stories in the market places of Antioch, and he fell readily again into the tricks of his old trade. “He had no children, and the Lord Jehovah did not seem disposed to bless Gael, his wife, with fruitfulness. So he began to look about him for a son to adopt, even as your father did. His choice fell finally on Stephen, the son of Shaphat, a dealer in leather and a poor man. Stephen was fifteen, a tall youth with a light in his eye, a skilled finger on the strings of the harp, a voice sweet and full; a young David, as you see, with some of the promise of the shepherd boy Samuel selected from among the sons of Jesse. Joseph never acted on impulse, and he had seen much of the boy before he made his choice and he had come to love him. He began to lay away gifts against the day of the legal adoption. There was the
kinnor
that Deborra uses, thinking it her very own and not knowing it had been intended for someone else. The merchant who sold it to Joseph swore by all his heathen gods that the strings had known no touch save the fingers of a king long since dead, in the East. There were also clothes of a rare fineness.

“But Shaphat had known days of adversity and had found it necessary to raise his family in Beth-Jeshimoth, which is called the Place of the Desert. Here it is so hot that the sap of life burns out early. Stephen had never recovered from this, and there was always a flush in his cheeks and he was as taut of spirit as the strings of the
kinnor
. Before the day of the adoption he was dead. Joseph mourned for him sadly and long; and it was then that the Lord, Who is above everything a just God, relented and saw to it that a new life stirred in the womb of Gael. Aaron was born, and his coming brought peace of mind to Joseph. But he never forgot the tall Stephen who might have been his son, and he laid away the clothes in camphor and he saw to it that they were watched and kept in perfect preservation. He never spoke of Stephen thereafter, and I do not think that either Aaron or Deborra has known anything of him. But before his last illness closed on him Joseph told me that, inasmuch as you were a son by adoption also, and because you stirred in his mind some memories of the fine young Stephen, he wished you to have the clothes, so that finally they would serve some part at least of the purpose for which they had been made.

“And so,” concluded Luke, “they are yours. I think it desirable that you wear them today.”

Basil put on the white linen tunic and over that the middle garment, which was a marvelous garment indeed. It was made of the finest and
heaviest of silk and it was in two parts. The upper part was a jacket that fitted snugly over the shoulders and arms and was embroidered on the breast in gold thread with an eagle clutching a serpent in its mouth, the sign of the tribe of Dan, to which Shaphat had belonged. The lower part was a skirt, bound tightly at the waist and falling just below the knees, and made of the rarest of all colors, blue. It was a color hard to obtain with the dyes in use, and so people had to content themselves with purples, reds, and yellows; but the skilled hands that had woven this piece of material had caught by some happy chance the very finest shade, a blue darker than the deepest tones of the sky and richer than the cornflower or lupine. Along the hem was a fringe of golden thread.