The Silver Chalice (52 page)

“Such as they are, they are not well enough concealed,” declared Deborra. “Please, get rid of her too. But I think, Basil, that we should retain the character of the room. We could call it the Room of Kindness.”

“I think it a very happy suggestion.”

Deborra had regained her good spirits completely now. “Which of us,” she asked, “will find it necessary most often to come here? You, escaping from a nagging wife, or I, from a hectoring husband?”

They continued their tour then and came in due course to the high room before which stood one of the two young men. The door was open, and through it they could see the other guard, sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the chest. He had cast off his outer robe and a dagger could be seen at his belt.

“They are to remain on watch day and night,” commented Deborra.

“They are not like the Giants of Slador,” commented Basil in an equally low tone. “But there is a fine air of resolution about them.”

Deborah turned toward the guard on the door. “Elidad.”

“Yes, gentle lady,” responded the guard, stepping forward.

“I think my husband would be interested in what happened last evening. When Harhas, the presbyter of the church in Antioch, came to discuss the situation.”

Elidad flushed bitterly. “He came to raise the point as to whether we should defend the Cup if an attempt were made to seize it. He said it was wicked to shed blood and that if Irijah and I should kill a man, even in so good a cause, we would be condemned forever to the outer darkness.”

“Would you mind repeating what you said in answer to Harhas?”

Elidad looked at them with the hesitation of a man of few words. “I said to Harhas that I could not stand by and see this precious Cup, which the lips of Jesus touched and which has been confided to our care, taken from us by those who do not believe in Him. I said I was prepared to
spend eternity in the outer darkness without repining if I had to be sent there for fighting against those who would steal it from us.”

“And what did Irijah say?”

The second guard, who had continued to sit beside the chest, sprang to his feet. “I will answer that myself!” he cried.

Coming to the doorway, he leaned against the stone frame and twirled the dagger in his hand.

“Yes, Irijah,” said Deborra. “It is your own report we would like to hear.”

The second guard’s eyes began to burn. “I am a man of peace!” he cried. He raised a finger and pointed to his right cheek, which had a shallow scar running from the corner of his eye to the hinge of his jaw. “Observe. It was the knife of a Zealot that did this. I said to myself, ‘And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other.’ They were the words that Jesus had spoken, the command He had laid on us. I obeyed that command. I turned the other cheek.” He swung his head around and revealed a somewhat similar scar on the left side of his face. “You see now that I am, as I have said, a man of peace.

“But”—and his eyes began to burn even more brightly—“I remember what Moses, our inspired leader, said. ‘
I will make mine arrows drunk with blood
.’ It was not the will of the Lord that we who believe in Him should be cowards. There comes a time when evil men, who have smitten you on both cheeks, will demand of you your soul. They will take liberty away from you and put shackles on you so that you may no longer worship the Lord in your own way nor tell other men of His teachings; and when that time comes, we must fight! What we may submit to as individuals we must not suffer as members of the church of the Lord Jehovah and of His son Jesus. If any men of ill intent come here to take away the sacred Cup, we must shed their blood and ease their souls from their bodies. And we must fight until not a breath of life is left in either of us!

“And that,” he concluded, “was what we told Harhas, the presbyter of the church.”

Deborra and Basil walked away in a different mood from the lightness of spirit with which they had concluded their survey of the house. The talk with the two earnest guards had taken their minds back to the Cup and the great responsibilities they shared. “I have been shown,” Basil was thinking, “what true faith should be, the kind of faith I lack, even though
I have come to believe in Jesus as a prophet and a divine teacher. Someday, perhaps, I shall feel as they do.”

“My grandfather, who was wise in all things,” said Deborra, “used to say that the future of Christianity would not rest with the old men. He said they were hairsplitters and quiddlers. The cause, he was sure, would be won by the young men who were ready to fight and die for their faith.”

The new house was like a conjurer’s bag because it had many surprises to offer, and the most surprising of all was Deborra’s bed. In the first place, it was quite enormous, being large enough to accommodate several people of her size. It stood high off the floor and had to be climbed into with some care. It was embellished with ivory decorations and had sheets that were elaborately embroidered. Most important of all, it was made of citrus wood, which came from Africa and was so much valued that wealthy men in Rome paid huge prices for a single piece. It was told of Petronius, a courtier whose opinion was much valued by Nero, that he had sold fifty slaves in order to purchase a plank of the best citrus wood and that, moreover, he was in the habit of pointing it out to guests and running an affectionate hand over its beautifully grained surface. He was reported to have said that it was well worth the price he had paid. All in all, therefore, Deborra’s bed was a very grand one indeed.

She sat on one side of it while Sarah made her ready for the night. First of all, the maidservant released her hair and allowed it to fall in unrestrained abundance over her shoulders, leaving no more than a few curls on the forehead and a quite small one in front of each ear.

“I think, mistress,” said Sarah, her fingers busy at undoing the loops of bound silk that fastened the tunic in the back, “that this is a house made for happiness and peace. I hope the mistress’s husband will be happy here too.”

“We must see that he is comfortable,” said Deborra, keeping her tone entirely matter-of-fact. “His windows must be kept open so the cool breezes from the sea will reach him. We must learn about his likes in food and his favorite wines.” She nodded her head and smiled. “He is still much of a stranger to all of us, Sarah.”

When the serving-maid had retired, the young bride settled herself in bed. It was infinitely soft, for the mattress was stuffed with sheep’s wool,
and she sighed with pleasure. Then she reached out an arm and extinguished the light. This did not leave the room in darkness, for the moon was well up over the horizon. It was flooding the groves with a silvery glow, as though curious to discover what might be happening in those mysterious thickets, and it still had enough curiosity left over to reach into every corner of the airy bedchamber.

This invasion of her privacy was not the reason that she failed to get to sleep. She raised herself on one elbow. “Tonight,” she thought, “he may come and say to me the things I must hear from him. Surely he will come tonight!”

It was evident that Basil had not yet sought the comfort of his couch. His footsteps could be heard at intervals in the adjoining room and occasionally the scraping of a chair. “Can it be,” she wondered, “that he has gone back to his work?” For the first time she was prepared to believe that there were things as important as the completion of the Chalice.

An hour passed. An occasional sound reached her from the other room to let her know that he was still awake. Her hopes dwindled slowly, but by the end of the hour she had been convinced that he had no intention of paying her a visit. A lump came into her throat.

“At the least,” she thought, “he might have come to the door to bid me good night.”

It occurred to her then that he might as readily have expected this of her. She had laid down the conditions of their marriage. If they were to be relaxed, should she not be the one to take the first step? She rose and slipped into a wrap of green velvety material that Sarah had left on a chair near the bed. It had a scarf at the neck that could be wound around the throat once and then tied in front. Her fingers were unsteady as they performed this task.

The opening of the door between the two rooms revealed Basil at a worktable under one of the windows. His head was bent and he had tools in each hand, a hammer and a chisel. Two oil lamps had been lighted and placed on each side of him.

She stood silently in the doorway, one hand nervously grasping the knob. “I am beginning to believe,” she said to herself, “that he thinks of nothing but his work.”

Conscious finally that he was being watched, Basil dropped the chisel on the table and turned to look over his shoulder.

“I have come,” said Deborra, “to wish you good night. And to warn you that you should not be working so late.”

Basil shifted his position, and the light from one of the lamps made it possible for her to see that his face was deeply lined with fatigue.

“Have I worked long?” he asked. “It seemed to me a few moments only. There is so much to be done!”

She walked slowly into the room, the hem of the green garment sweeping the floor, one hand holding the scarf in place at her neck.

“I hoped——” she began. Then she became aware that he had not fully withdrawn his attention from his work, that he was only partly conscious of what she was saying. She checked the words of guarded invitation that had been on the tip of her tongue. Instead she asked, “Would it disturb you if I sat here for a while and watched you?”

He turned completely around then and ran a hand across his eyes. “No,” he answered. “But I am sure you will find it dull. You see, I have made a clay replica of the Cup and I am fitting the framework around it. It is slow work and not at all interesting to watch.”

“I cannot get to sleep.” She drew up a chair and perched herself on top of it, with her knees drawn up under her chin, her hands clasping her bare ankles. “I like to know everything you do about the Chalice. Please do not shut me out. Can you talk about it while you work?” She studied the frame that already covered the replica of the Cup. “You have done a great deal to it since I saw it last.”

“Yes, a great deal. I have introduced symbols into the pattern—doves and lambs and helix shells. Right now I am soldering it together.” He turned to her and smiled. “Does your interest extend that far? If I talk about it, your eyelids will become as heavy as the lead I am using and you will fall asleep in your chair. You see, I consider it necessary to use the very finest solder. I make it with one ounce of pure silver, two ounces of purified copper, and three ounces of lead. Then I pour in a little finely ground sulphur—— Are you still listening?”

“Yes, I am still listening. And I understand what you are saying.” To herself she added: “Oh, Basil, Basil, do you not see that every word you toss me so carelessly thrills me to the core of my being? Do you not understand that everything you do, even to the mixing of solder, excites me? But of course you do not see these things because you do not know how much I love you; and because you, my husband, do not love me.”

Basil went on with his explanations: “The figures are going to be so very small that I must surround them with devices to assist in identifying them. Around the figure of Jesus I will show the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. Above Him will be the Star of the Nativity.”

He was speaking in a reflective tone and, after the first few minutes, he kept his eyes exclusively on his work. Once he broke out into a bitter tirade at himself because his fingers had fallen into error. This made her certain that he had forgotten she was there.

“Will he never see how much I love him?” she asked herself. “Must I go on like this, keeping all my thoughts to myself, making no effort to win him to me? Oh, Basil, Basil, look at me once again as you did that day when I threw the stone at the Romans!”

Inevitably the need for sleep overtook her. Her eyelids became heavy and several times she caught herself nodding. She sighed then and lowered her feet to the floor, the nicely shaped white feet she had refused to use as a means of winning his interest. It did not occur to her, because the action had been so natural, that he could have seen her whole foot and even more had he been noticing.

“It is very late,” she said. “You should stop now. You must be very tired.”

His eyes were still preoccupied when he turned to look at her. “I must finish what I am doing while the solder remains fluid.” He studied the frame that was now solidly clamped around the clay model. “There is still a full hour’s work. You had better not stay up any longer, Deborra. Your voice tells me that you are tired.”

“Solder!” she said. “We seem to have talked more about solder than anything else. It is, of course, a subject of deep interest.”

She stood up. Her feet vanished from sight as the folds of the green wrap fell into place. The scarf was gathered so closely about her that very little of her throat was visible. This did not matter because he had already turned to his work. Her eyes, fixed on the back of his head, were rebellious. “The smallest detail of what he is doing is more important to him than I am,” she thought.

She asked as she turned toward the door, “Can I get you some food or a cup of wine?”

He shook his head. He was too absorbed to take any interest in food or wine, let alone to understand the emotional strain that showed in her voice.

“There is nothing I want,” he said.

Deborra walked slowly to her room. “He looked at me but he did not see me. He has no interest in me at all. If I asked him to accept my love, he would say the same thing, ‘There is nothing I want.’ ”

“Good night, Basil,” she said at the door.

There was a barely perceptible pause before he answered. “Good night, Deborra.”

She closed the door softly behind her and climbed into the stately bed of scented citrus wood. She began to sob passionately. “There is nothing more I can do,” she said to herself in the darkness.