The Silver Chalice (60 page)

Basil had difficulty in finding a response that would convey the truest clue to the state of his mind. “I believe in Jesus,” he said. “I believe Him to be the Son of the one and only God. I believe He will return to this earth and I hope His coming will not be long delayed. But because I do not share the ecstasy which these beliefs have brought to others, I think there must be a higher point of conviction that I have not reached.”

Cephas nodded his head. “Sometime soon it will come. It may be that you will suffer a severe blow or that you will be called upon to make a sacrifice. In the strain of such a moment your eyes will be opened. The tinder in your heart will take fire. You will feel a great happiness gain possession of you. The world will light up and the sun will shine in all the dark places where before you saw nothing but shadows. You will cry out what you believe and you will want everyone to hear.”

B
ELOW THE
A
TRIUM
V
ESTAE
, where the Via Nova swings in an arc to join the Via Sacra, there stood here and there, in odd corners, a few houses that had been left behind when the district ceased to be residential. They were crowded in between governmental buildings or they occupied irregular plots of ground created by the confusion of the streets. They had once been occupied by citizens of the first importance, but now they had ceased to be desirable in any way.

One of these survivals of a better era was a tall and narrow house with an entrance framed in marble that had become yellowed by time and blackened by the grime of years. This gloomy abode had been rented by Simon the Magician for the period of his stay in Rome and it suited his purposes well. Visitors could come and go without attracting any attention, because in all reason it would be assumed that official errands took them there. Ever since his first appearance before the Emperor Nero (which had been an amazing success, sending chills down every spine), these visitors had been coming, seeking assistance in matters of a devious nature and paying handsomely for such things as charms and love potions. Most of them were women who were carried to the neighborhood in covered chairs on the shoulders of sweating slaves and who glanced about them before emerging from behind the curtains and slipping in under the dirty marble lintel.

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 S
IMON
M
AGUS
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 shoulders 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!”

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.”