The Silver Chalice (80 page)

Basil shook his head rather sadly. “I wasted so much time at the court of Nero. And the voyage coming home seemed to stretch out endlessly. This has given me a sense of urgency about the work. I feel that if I wasted a single day I would be punished by not being allowed to finish the Chalice.”

Deborra gave up the effort. “I will not disturb you,” she promised.

It became necessary for her to interrupt him, nevertheless, at a late hour of the morning. She paused in the doorway and reluctantly addressed his stooped back.

“Two friends are here,” she said. “Elidad and Irijah.”

He turned around at once. “The two strong young men? Is it going to be necessary for us to have guards?”

“You have heard that Mijamin is to be released from prison. Luke is afraid that the—the trouble will start now. The Cup, as you know, is not here. Luke took it away as soon as you left, but he has not told what he did with it. The Zealots tried hard to find it and searched through the homes of Christians all over Antioch. It was a very thorough raid; in one day and night they went from house to house and ransacked everything. They found nothing, but they did much damage.”

“It is reasonable for them to think that it will be brought back here now that I have returned to work on it.”

“Luke is certain that Mijamin will think so. But he does not want it returned until you have finished.” Deborra turned her attention to the new arrivals. “They are nice young men. So quiet and gentle and so very humble. But you should see the bundles of clothing they brought with them; they are so pathetically small and cheap. I feel very sorry for them.”

Basil laid down his chisel with a serious air. “I was talking to Hananiah last night. He and his wife gave everything away. Now she is old and frail, but they go on. They intend to go on living as they do as long as they survive. Listening to him, I had some grave misgivings. Is it possible to serve Jesus if you are rich and live as the rich do?”

Deborra considered the point with a gravity to match his own. “I would like to repeat what I heard my grandfather say because I am sure
it would relieve you of those misgivings,” she said finally. “He said that the Christian church will become the same as any other religion in one respect, that it will have to be governed and controlled and supported. There have to be leaders, inspired leaders, and there have to be missionaries to spread the gospel, and there have to be martyrs to create traditions and build faith. And, he added most emphatically, there has to be money.

“Do you know,” she went on, “that Hananiah and his wife, Dorcas, live all the year round under that strip of canvas? In winter they have a fire, but they do not possess a brazier and the fire has to be built on the ground. They use bits of wood and dried camel dung and anything else that Hananiah can pick up. They have one set of blankets and one plate and one drinking cup between them. They have no knives or spoons. Their bed is a pile of rocks stuffed with dried moss. They have an empty case in which hides had been packed as a table.”

She came close enough to lean a hand on his worktable. “Basil,” she said, looking down at him earnestly, “I am as anxious as you are to give myself to His service. But how can we, you and I, be most useful? By finding a tannery yard and living under another strip of canvas? Young people who expect to have children cannot do that. By going out as missionaries to far parts of the world? I am not at all sure we would do well as preachers. But we can continue of great use by helping to produce funds for the church. That was my grandfather’s part, and I think we are best fitted to follow in his footsteps. While you have been away I have been thinking about it and planning. I have some ideas as to how we could go about it.”

Basil looked up at her and smiled at the gravity of her expression. “I suppose you are right. I spoke without having given it any serious thought. You will have to be patient with me, my very capable little wife. I am a new convert and sometimes I find myself ready to explode with zeal.” He paused and then gave his head a nod. “Yes, I can see now that you are right. We must find the way to be most useful.”

It was drawing on toward the middle of the afternoon when Basil became aware that someone was watching him and turned around from his work to find his wife in the doorway.

“I have been here for quite a long time,” she said, taking no more than a step into the room. “Are you very much displeased at being interrupted?”

He stretched his arms slowly and luxuriously. “I am tired,” he said, “and it is a pleasure to be interrupted. By you.”

“I did not intend to. I have been coming to the door and watching you off and on all day—and you were so interested in your work that you did not know. I came”—she began to count—“eleven times.”

He rose to his feet, stretched again, and strolled to the laver in a corner of the room. “I shall do no more. Give me time to get myself clean and I’ll be ready to join you. For the rest of the day we can be as idle as you wish.”

“Wonderful!” cried Deborra. “This is what I hoped for. Perhaps it was because I was hoping so much that you turned finally and saw me.”

He had stripped off his outer tunic and allowed the inner garment to fall to his waist. Deborra was too startled to move at first.

“I don’t think,” she said, “that I should stay.”

He answered by quoting her own words. “You are my wife and I love you. Why should I mind?”

He finished his ablutions and stretched out a hand for the towel.

“No, no, that is not fair!” she cried. She took the towel away from him. “I must have a chance to test that discovery you made this morning.” She stepped close and put her arms around his neck. “You were right! It is wonderful to kiss your husband when
his
face is damp.”

But then everything was wonderful for the rest of the day. They went for the walk in the woods which she had suggested, taking the dog with them. They spent two hours in that part of the Grove which stretched down toward the house, and they found that there was magic in everything, particularly in the rich tints of the autumn foliage. They found a late pear tree, and it was apparent to them both at their first taste of the fruit that, although nature had been bringing forth crops of pears for untold centuries, there had never been any to equal these. The dog, wild with delight at being allowed to go with them, chased rabbits and treed other wild things and barked and succeeded finally in running himself into a state of complete exhaustion. “He is a wonderful fellow,” declared Basil. A pebble became lodged in Deborra’s sandal and Basil, stooping to dislodge it, remained in that position so long that she laughed and asked the reason. “I have made another discovery,” he declared. “You have the most wonderful feet in the world.”

They thought at first that this day of wonders reached its climax with the sunset. They had swung around the Grove of Daphne and had come to an elevated location where it was possible to look full into the west, and it was as though the Maker of sunsets had said to Himself, “I have
fashioned millions of young couples who have fallen in love; but these two seem to be a little more in love than anyone has ever been and I shall have to do something unusual for them.” It was indeed an unusual kind of sunset. The western horizon was as red as the fire opals the matrons of Rome prized so much, and there were coral and amethyst shades on the edges of the clouds, and under everything else a strong illumination, as though the day actually had been memorable enough to warrant a blaze of glory at its finish.

But the real climax, they found, came later: when they sat down alone to supper and Deborra was dressed in pink. He had never seen her in pink before. The robe was rather elaborate, having a Grecian triangular overdrape of white edged with black in front and sleeves with no fewer than five openings held together by straps of the same black material. It was exactly the kind of robe a bride should wear on such an occasion and he delighted in it, saying to her with pride that no color could more adequately set off the dusk of her hair and the subdued shadow of her eyes.

“I am not hungry tonight,” she said, cupping her chin in her hands. “I have told the servants to go to bed, that I will clear the table and trim the lamps. We will be all alone, my husband, without a listening ear or a whispering tongue near us.”

The cat came and sprang into her lap and purred. The dog came slinking in, knowing that this was forbidden territory, and crouched at her feet. Basil had reached down the
kinnor
from the wall, but he placed it on the floor beside him without striking a note.

“I don’t want to talk or sing at this moment,” he said. “I want only to sit here silently and feast my eyes on you.”

A tempestuous wind, which sailors called Euroclydon, was blowing at sea and all Antioch was suffering in the freezing cold that had descended from the mountains. The beggars in the market places and at the gates had purple noses. Men who carried brick or tile on their backs had to stop often and flail their arms about them in order to keep warm. Even in the house on the edge of the Grove of Daphne, where connubial bliss might have been expected to make two of the occupants impervious to such small matters as an atmospheric change, everyone was unhappy. The menservants, with the red flannel of the
bracae
covering their chapped
knees, carried braziers into all the rooms and lighted charcoal fires in them but did not relieve the discomforts to any extent. The maidservants, being young and therefore a little giddy, were glad that their winter robes were long enough to hide the ill-fitting
indusium
that clung about their limbs from waist to ankle.

Basil’s work was nearly completed and he was driving himself hard to finish it, although at frequent intervals he had to stop and hold his numbed fingers over the smoldering fire in the brazier. Finally, with an air of great triumph, he picked up a hammer and gave the clay replica of the Cup a blow that shattered it into an infinitesimal number of pieces as a sign that he needed it no longer. Deborra chose this moment to enter the room, muffled up in a
palla
commodious enough to provide a hood for her head and to cover her feet completely. Basil, who had not hesitated about donning the
bracae
, did not know how greatly she was suffering from the cold. Later, when such exciting matters had ceased to be mysterious, he would realize that she never wore the ugly leggings the servants used. She had to content herself with a much less warm garment that hung from her shoulders by straps and came only to her knees, where it was rather loosely held in by garters.

“I am nearly frozen!” she said. “I would not have left my fire and come here to interrupt you unless I had something to tell you; something that is very important. So important that I could not wait.”

Basil reached out a hand and tweaked the end of her nose, which was cold and, if the truth must be told, a trifle red. “My poor little rabbit from the warm South has not raised a coat of winter fur yet,” he said. “We always have a few days like this in rugged Antioch, my shivery one. Are you regretting that you must go on living here?” Then his eyes lighted up and he raised his voice to an exultant pitch. “I am delighted you came because I have something to tell you. I have finished the Chalice! See, I have broken the clay model. There is not another stroke of work to be done on it.”

Everything else went out of Deborra’s mind. She clapped her hands and then threw her arms around his neck and hugged him ecstatically. “Have you really finished?” she cried. “I am so glad. It has taken you so long and you have worked so hard. Am I allowed to see it now? You have been so secretive about it and I have not had a single glimpse since you returned from Rome.”

He placed an arm about her waist and turned her around to face his worktable, where the outer frame of silver was covered with a clean linen
cloth. He removed the cloth and they stood in silence for several minutes, looking at his handiwork. It was finished to the last detail. The twelve small figures, all of which could be identified as minute copies of the life-sized clay models, occupied their places against the intricate background of vines. The lip had been turned and embellished with infinite and loving care. The base was mathematically perfect. The twelve models were grouped about the completed frame and seemed to constitute a guard. They had an air of vigilance about them.

“It is beautiful!” cried Deborra. “Oh, Basil, it is the most lovely thing in the world. I am sure if my grandfather could see it he would say you have done what he wanted—and more.”

Basil studied his work with a brooding air. “I wish I could feel as sure of that as you do,” he said. Then he remembered that she had come in the first place for a purpose that had nothing to do with the completion of the Chalice. “You said you had something to tell me.”

“Yes,” said his wife, removing her eyes from the silver reliquary. “It is not like this. It is not about something that is finished. It is—well, it is about something that has just begun.”

“I don’t understand——” began Basil. Then he stopped. He took her by both shoulders and pulled her around so that he could study her face. “What was it you said?”

“Yes.” Deborra nodded her head and gave a short, breathless laugh. “Yes, we are going to have a child.”

It was Basil’s turn to forget everything else. He took her in his arms and pressed her cheek to his. They stood thus for a long time, too happy and awed with the magnificence of their good fortune to utter a word. Deborra had begun to weep quietly, and he could taste the salt of her tears on his lips.

It was Basil who broke the silence. “I am very proud,” he said. “Very proud and very happy. I am sure that Prince P’ing-li, if his spirit is anywhere about, is almost as pleased as I am.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “The dear old man would be pleased. And think how happy Luke will be when he hears!”

Basil fell into another silence and then announced, “I shall name my son Joseph.”

“I too would like him to be named Joseph. But if it should happen that a name had to be found for my daughter, what will you have in mind?”