The Silver Chalice (35 page)

“Is he tall or short?”

“Short. There was a mark at one corner of his mouth. A scar, perhaps.”

Adam nodded his head. “Mijamin. One of Rub Samuel’s men. He would cut all our throats with ease and thoroughness and eat a hearty supper immediately after. He will try to get his hands on this Cup.” When Deborra and Basil regarded him with startled looks, he indulged in a scornful snort. “Did you think I did not know about it? I have a good pair of ears and a useful pair of eyes. There is very little that I miss. I was certain you would have it with you, and I am not surprised that our handsome and alert bridegroom catches a glimpse of the dreaded Mijamin below. We shall have the men of Rub Samuel on our heels the whole distance, and their daggers, perhaps, in our backs.” He glanced at their anxious faces and indulged in another snort. “Where is it now?”

A small interior window looked out over the courtyard. Deborra walked to it and from this point of vantage scanned the scene below. The crowd seemed to have become louder and noisier. Caravan men, with faces the color of cocoa and eyes that were never still, were arguing in groups. Traders with shrewd eyes, slatternly servants, emaciated beggars who had been forced out to the edges like flotsam in a whirlpool; everyone talking at once, every eye on fire, every hand in action.

Deborra’s servants stood in an aloof group. The women had dropped veils over their faces, but in spite of this precaution they were being watched with an avid curiosity. They were standing closely about an elaborately carved chest that had been painted a warm carnelian shade. The rest of the party’s belongings had been heaped up in a careless pile with a very old and plain chest as the base.

Her eyes did no more than dart across the servants guarding the ornate chest and then came to rest on the dilapidated specimen under the rugs and assorted utensils of travel. She gave a sigh of relief when she saw that Luke had stationed himself close thereby and was watching with zealous eyes.

She turned back from the window and said to Adam, “The Cup is being carefully guarded.”

The latter took his turn at the window. After a moment’s scrutiny of the noisy scene he clapped his hands and shouted an order to his men
below. In a matter of seconds all of the belongings of the party had been carried up and deposited in a corner. Luke followed in the wake of the old chest.

“Everything we own will be stolen if we give those thieves below a chance to set their clever fingers to work,” Adam said. “And now, if you three innocents will listen to me carefully, I shall endeavor to make clear to you the nature of the troubles which lie ahead of us.”

He walked to each window in turn, glancing out to make sure they could not be reached from below. Then he visited the head of the stairs and listened carefully.

“Throw a potsherd through any village in Palestine and you will hit at least three Zealots,” he said. “Open your mouth with an opinion in any public place and a Zealot will answer you, probably with a blow. In other words, my three unworldlings, the men of Rub Samuel are to be found everywhere, and Mijamin can summon them to his aid at any time and in any place. He will wait until he thinks the circumstances most favorable and then he will strike. Our best plan will be to provide him with the opportunity—and have a warm reception planned. I think I begin to see my way clearly.”

He seemed reluctant to reveal the nature of the plan he had evolved, glancing anxiously at Luke and suspiciously at Basil. Realizing, however, that they must be taken into his confidence, he continued with his explanation. “Tonight I shall circulate below—where I know most of them and where, of course, they all know me—and I shall let it be known that tomorrow we will progress as far as En-Gannim and pitch our tents outside the town. The mention of En-Gannim will set the mind of Mijamin to work at once. As you all know, it lies in a shallow valley at the southern tip of the Plain of Esdraelon. Now it happens that Mijamin was born and raised on the Plain, and he knows that the Zealots are strong in all the towns there. All he will have to do is to start ahead of us—I expect he will steal away from here in the middle of the night—and gather about him the men he will need. I shall let it be known that, to save time, we intend to raise our tents on the crest of the valley. Mijamin will rub his hands and whistle through his teeth with delight when he hears this, for the crest of the valley does not afford any cover for defense and there is, for good measure, a wadi running along it in which an attacking force may approach without being seen. He will think that Adam has become as blind as a bat in daylight when he hears where I shall pitch the tents.

“It so happens,” he went on, with open relish of his own craft, “that En-Gannim has an advantage for us of which he knows nothing. Just above it, in a green spot scooped out from the Plain, lives a very good friend of mine. His name is Catorius, and he is a Roman. He was serving in this country when his term ran out and he was allowed to remain here, having married a woman of Emek-Keziz, a fine big woman with thick limbs and a heart as warm as the sun-baked town where she was born. They took land on the Plain and there they have been successful in raising two commodities: sheep, which have made them prosperous, and sons who are the bulwark of their old age. When we have pitched our tents outside En-Gannim and darkness has fallen, I shall steal over to the house of Catorius in the little dip in the hills and beg the aid of these three sons of his.”

“Are they Christians?” asked Luke.

“Christians?” cried Adam. “No, Luke the Physician, they are as simple and natural as the sheep they tend, and as pagan as Astarte.”

“Is it then right to involve them in our troubles? Moreover, can we put full trust in them?”

Adam burst into a roar of delighted laughter. “If your gentle heart, O Luke, must overflow with compassion for someone, save it for the unsuspecting men Mijamin will bring against us and who will find themselves confronted by these Sons of Anak from the Plain! They are sometimes called the Giants of Slador.”

Having thus settled the most pressing of their problems to his own complete satisfaction, Adam proceeded to issue orders for the night. It would be necessary for one of them to sleep with the Cup under his pillow, and for this he selected Luke. The rest would take turns at standing watch during the hours of darkness. Basil was given the first turn, with Deborra to follow and Adam to watch last.

“We must set out at break of dawn,” decided Adam briskly. “And now for supper.”

Basil took his station at the head of the stairs. The courtyard had lapsed into a silence broken only by an occasional whimper from one of the camels or the chatter of a hyena on the prowl. He was conscious every moment that the sacred Cup was in the room and that he was guarding it. He had expected it would shine through the wood of the broken chest with the strange glow that had radiated from it in the gloom of his sanctuary in the house of Joseph. Each time he turned to
look he was surprised at the darkness. He could see nothing but the white of Deborra’s dress where she lay in a corner. Her breathing was so light that he could not tell whether she was awake or sleeping.

Once he heard the stairs creak and his hand closed on the hilt of his dagger. For several minutes he waited tensely, but the sound was not repeated. Nothing happened; a rat, he decided. He was realizing how deep was his concern for the safety of the Cup. His brow was bathed in perspiration and the palms of his hands were damp.

As time passed he became certain that Deborra was sleeping and he hesitated to rouse her when the time came for her to take his place. She stirred, however, and sat up in the darkness.

“Basil!” she whispered.

“Yes, Deborra?”

“Is it not time for me to begin?”

“Not yet. Go back to sleep again for a while.”

“I have not been able to sleep. I have been lying here and thinking.”

“All the more reason then for getting to sleep now. We have a hard day ahead of us.”

“But you need the rest as much as I do.”

He heard her move. When he turned and looked in her direction, she was already on her feet.

“Where are you?” she whispered.

“Here. At the head of the stairs.”

She crossed the room on naked feet and seated herself beside him on the top step. After a moment she began to speak in a low tone.

“Let us talk for a while. There will never be a better chance. I want to say, Basil, that I begin to see I was wrong in doing this. It is unfair to you to be tied to a wife you do not love.”

“But, Deborra——”

“It is the truth, Basil. There is no need to spare my feelings by protesting. The only excuse I have is the need to help the leaders of the church.” The tone of her voice suggested now that she was drawing a rueful amusement out of the situation in which they were placed. “I have, at any rate, shown how much I trust you. Has it occurred to you that as my husband you could take my inheritance and use it in any way you see fit?”

This aspect had not occurred to him. “No. I have given it no thought.”

“It is true. We are wedded on the terms of Baal and Beulah. To keep the money out of my father’s hands, I have put it into yours.”

“Are you afraid of what I may do?”

“No, Basil. You are good. You are unselfish; too unselfish, perhaps. No, I have no fear at all.” She leaned her head against the wall and sighed deeply. “We must strive to be kind to each other. We must remain friends in spite of everything. I was not kind to you today. I said hard things, and my mind was filled with hard thoughts. There was no reason for me to feel that way, or none that I can see now. You had done nothing wrong. But my pride had been hurt and so I—I found bitterness on my tongue. Such pride is an evil thing, Basil, and I am sure that I have been guilty of much wickedness.”

“If there has been any kind of wickedness, I am the guilty one,” declared Basil.

She indulged in a long and deep sigh. “Do you remember the bargain we made between us? That we would always smile when we were together? And ever since we have done nothing but feel unhappy and draw long faces. I have even lost my pet, my poor, solemn little Habakkuk. Ebenezer is keeping him until I can take him again.”

“Ebenezer will be a kind master to him.”

“As I lay in the dark back there I was thinking about this sad pass to which we have come. I could see how easy it would be for us to become bitter and angry with each other.”

“I am sure I could never be angry with you.”

Basil discovered that his feeling for her had taken on a deep tenderness. The mood of that rare moment when they had paused after their scramble through the valley came back to him. He was acutely aware that she was very close to him in the darkness and that they were man and wife. He thought, “Why should I not take her in my arms as any other husband would do, even those who see their wives for the first time when they raise the veil?” Perhaps love would develop through such abruptness. Perhaps the image of Helena would then pass out of his mind and never return.

There was tensity in the air between them. Deborra had raised her head from its anchorage against the wall and was looking at him in the dark. Had the same thoughts entered her mind? How slender she was in her fine white raiment!

Then came recollection of the way she had looked after he had first spoken of Helena; cold, hurt, eternally aloof, unforgiving. He had agreed to her conditions and he must not attempt to break his promises
at the first opportunity. She would feel nothing but contempt for him if he did.

The golden moment passed, if indeed it had been such. He became aware that Deborra’s mood had changed. She drew a deep sigh and then began to sob gently in the dark. “My poor grandfather!” she said. “Please, Basil, I must sit here alone for a time with my grief. I must reconcile myself to living in a world which he has left.”

He went back to his own corner. Adam was snoring vigorously, Luke with dignity and serenity, the servants like a full orchestra of
kinnor, shofar, hozazra
, and
tof
. Not a sound came from the courtyard below. Mijamin, no doubt, had left long before this to recruit the Zealots of the Plain. Basil realized suddenly that he was tired from the continuous excitements and the efforts of the day. He fell off quickly to sleep.

Since dawn they had been passing the high circle of hills that was called Samaria and was marked on the south by Mount Gerizim and on the north by Mount Ebal. The country of the Samaritans had looked cool and inviting; the slopes were green and there was a promise of sweet content and abundance in the valleys lying between the tree-fringed peaks. Adam could not keep his eyes away from this fortunate land where so much of the history of his race had been made. He kept up a continuous tirade in audible tones.

“Why is it,” he demanded of the world at large and even perhaps of the Jehovah who had been responsible for the way things had fallen out, “that the cursed Cutheans have this most favored land for their own? Why do we, the children of Israel, who have been chosen by the one and only God, have to subsist on slopes of bare limestone or on desert lands where men faint of the heat in midday? Why must we raise our crops on baking plains? Perhaps,” with a grumbling acquiescence, “it is done as a test. As we must live harder, we have become keen and practical and as bright as burnished metal. We are tempered in the heat of the sun, and the blood runs passionately in our veins. If we had these green hills for our own, we might in time become as soft and worthless as the Samaritans.” He concluded with a sigh, “But it would be pleasant to live in such ease and comfort.”

It was late in the afternoon, and the peak of Mount Ebal had receded
so far into the distance that the traditional cursing from its slopes could never have reached them even if relayed by a thousand trumpets. The steady pace of Adam’s carefully selected camels brought them abreast of a much smaller party. A wrinkled face peered out at them from the curtains of a curiously shaped conveyance that had curtains of the brightest scarlet embroidered with dragons. In a high and thin voice that suggested the twittering of birds at the first dawn, the owner of the wrinkled face said, “Peace be with you, honored sirs, and may abounding prosperity be your lot.”