The Silver Chalice (57 page)

“When?” cried Basil with relief and delight.

“Now,” said Raguel. “He will attend the services that begin”—he turned to stare up at the position of the sun—“in about half an hour.”

The chamber in which they found themselves after the descent of a sloping passage through dark rock was dimly lighted by torches fixed at
intervals in the walls. After his eyes became accustomed to the gloom Basil saw that the space below was already well filled. The people sat for the most part on the natural flooring of stone, but a few, who seemed to be on watch, stood along the walls; men of serious mien, intent, resolute, even fanatical. They seemed less predominantly Semitic than at the other Christian gatherings Basil had witnessed, and he commented on this in a whisper.

“Nearly all here today are converts of Paul’s,” answered Raguel. “He has been much in Ephesus and, whenever he comes to expound the truth to us, we grow and multiply. There has been whispering of late among the Jewish people that Paul is trying to lead them away from the Laws of Moses. They do not like it. They resent his efforts to carry the Word to Gentiles. Many have recanted and become the strictest of Judaizers, casting Jesus out of their hearts. They are the most bitter against us. They give encouragement and aid to the Men with the Daggers.” Basil could see an apologetic expression spread across his face. “Was it any wonder, my young friend, that I was suspicious of you and not prepared at once to lead you to John? Next to Paul, he is the one the backsliders would like most to deliver over to the Asiarchs.”

More people continued to arrive, weary men who walked stiffly and paused before entering to shake the dust from their robes.

“Where do they come from?” asked Basil.

“Many are miners and live hereabouts. The rest are from the city. It is the rule to start during the hours of darkness to avoid notice, for it is above everything necessary to conceal the secret of where we meet. They will go back by twos and threes, being very leisurely about it and making it seem that they have spent the day walking in the fields. They, the bitter turncoats and the men who carry daggers, know better, of course; but so far they have failed to discover anything about us. We change the places of meeting every few weeks. I don’t know where we shall go next.”

Raguel fell silent at this point and laid a restraining hand on Basil’s arm. The services were beginning with a reading from early writings. The member who did the reading stood on a ledge of rock at one end of the chamber. Knowing that most of them came from the poorest part of the population, Basil was surprised at the scholarly note in the speaker’s voice and the fine intelligence in his face. The reading was followed by singing in which all joined. There was a pause then, and Basil took advantage of it to look about him more closely at the earnest men and women who made up the gathering. His eyes, having completed
the circle of the chamber, came back again to the stone ledge, and he was surprised to find that it now had a new occupant.

The newcomer was of undistinguished stature, being under the average in height and thin to the point of emaciation, a stooped and somehow pathetic figure in a plain white robe. He looked about him and raised an arm in the air; and the rustling and the whispers ceased and the figures seated in the semi-gloom became as motionless as the warriors and gods that were traced crudely on the walls above them.

Basil turned to his companion with an inquiring uplift of eyebrow, and Raguel answered by shaping noiselessly with his lips the single word, “John.”

“I come to you, mayhap, for the last time,” said John, speaking in a thin, high voice. “It is written that soon I shall be taken and sent to the islands, to be held there in captivity by men who are filled with hatred and fear. They fear and hate me, but even more the vision that has come to me. My eyes have been lifted to the heights and I have seen the writing on the heavenly walls beyond the clouds and the stars. The voice of the Lord has spoken in my ear and has told me that I must preach to men of what I have seen and heard.”

His voice rose suddenly to a high pitch, filled with conviction and passion. “Ye that walk in the truth, who have been born of God because ye believe that Jesus is the Christ, ye need have no fear. He that came by blood and water will come again soon, and it is not strange that these others are filled with a fear of His coming. The time is close at hand! I shall speak to the seven churches before the time comes, and what I have to tell will turn the blood of the kings of earth to water, and the blood of the great men as well as the little men and the scoffers. And they will seek to hide themselves in the depths of the forests and under the waters and in the bowels of the earth under the high tombs of the mountains.”

Basil was listening intently, but even as his ears were filled with the strange words of the passionate little man his fingers were pulling excitedly at the blue strings of the cloth. He did not want to miss a single word that fell from the almost bloodless lips of the apostle, but he knew he must not lose this opportunity to imprison in the damp clay the unusual countenance of this favorite follower of Jesus. It was not a difficult task in one sense, for the leonine head of John was different in ways that set him sharply apart. His protruding forehead of a thinker and dreamer was like a broad penthouse. The straight nose was long
enough to balance the width between eye and ear, but it made the mouth and chin seem small by comparison. The mouth, Basil perceived, was sensitive and the chin courageous, but it was only with a second glance that he noticed them at all, so immediately did his eye absorb the grandeur of the brow and the banked fires that smoldered beneath it.

“Will I be able to capture his mighty spirit?” thought the young artist, his fingers furiously busy. “Can I make it clear that this is a man who walks and talks with God?”

The apostle was telling of his vision in words that were sometimes vague and sometimes even incoherent but always touched with a power that transcended human use. Basil became so carried away finally that he lost concern with the task that had brought him there. His hands ceased their efforts while he watched and listened. At least it seemed to him that this was so; but at a moment when the apostle paused, he realized that, without any prompting of his will, they had resumed the work of molding and manipulating the clay.

He was filled at once with a sense of horror. It had happened again! He remembered how his fingers had dug so passionately into the clay when his thoughts had turned to Linus and the revenge he craved, and how completely they had destroyed the first model he had made of Luke. Was this a repetition? Had the clay in his hands been turned into another formless mass? He was afraid to look.

John’s voice ceased its fervid outpouring. After the customary breaking of bread, he lifted an arm in blessing. A moment of silent prayer followed, and then he stepped down from the ledge of rock. Basil felt the hand of Raguel on his shoulder.

“The meeting is over,” said the dyer, getting to his feet. “You have seen John, young stranger. You have heard him speak. Has it not been a wonderful experience?”

“I shall always be grateful to you,” replied Basil, following him out into the ascending passage to the mine. He continued to carry the clay in both hands, but he had not yet mastered his feeling sufficiently to risk a glance at it.

When they reached the open air he raised it to a level with his eyes and immediately felt his spirits bound out of control. He wanted to shout aloud in delight and surprise. His hands had not betrayed him a second time. Laboring on of their own accord, they had achieved more than they might have done if his will had been directing them. The accurate modeling that he had begun consciously had been carried on to a finish,
even to the matter of details, the lines so deeply marked on the forehead and about the somber eyes, the sunken contour of the cheeks, the sensitive lips. It was, he realized, a finished effort; to go on with it further would be to strain for something beyond perfection.

“A spirit took possession of me today,” he thought exultantly. “But it was not an evil one.”

The men and women who had been sitting at the feet of John were not lingering or standing about in groups to exchange opinions and experiences as they would have done under any other circumstances. With quiet resolution they were setting off for their homes. Never more than two went together, and they were scattering to different roads as quickly as possible.

Raguel was staring with astonishment at the clay head in his companion’s hands. “You made that?” he asked in an incredulous whisper. “You made it while we were inside? It is hard to believe, and yet there is the proof of it.” He gave his head an emphatic nod. “Now I no longer have any doubts. The story you told me was true. The Cup is safe. Someday your efforts will make for it a frame of fitting beauty. I am happy that I trusted you and brought you with me today.”

I
T WAS LATE
in the evening, but a stifling heat still gripped the city on the Tiber. One of the travelers, who had come on the same ship from Ephesus and who had a house near the Fabricius Bridge, had agreed to show Basil the way to the small inn where he was to stay. They had been much in each other’s company, and the young Roman had finally divulged that he was a Christian.

“It will be so dark that we will see little,” said the Roman, whose name was Crassus. “That is a pity. One should see Rome first in the middle of the day, when it is the most exciting spectacle in the world. It passes all belief then.” He indulged in a sigh that was only faintly regretful. “It is the most wicked of all cities, but you cannot help loving it. Life seems empty when you are away.”

“Were you born here?” asked Basil.

The other nodded. “I was born in the house where I now live. I took over the house and the trade in Eastern goods when my father died. I am different from most of the Christians in Rome. I am patrician. Although I do not believe in squandering money”—this was easy to understand, for he had been the one to suggest that they make their way through the city on foot—“I am a rather rich man. I do not give the church all my profits, but I give a large share.”

They passed the Aventine Hill and the tufa quarries. There was nothing here of the glory of Rome at midday. The streets were dark and empty. They skirted the Circus Maximus and came rather wearily, for the grades had been steep, into the Forum Romanorum. The young patrician said proudly, “We now stand in the exact center of the world.”

The Forum was crowded and noisy even at this hour. They stopped
in front of the Temple of Janus, and Crassus pointed out that the bronze door was open. “It is never closed when Rome is at war,” he said. “Indeed, one might say it is never closed.”

Most of the people in the Forum were sight-seers, staring at the monuments and looking in the clear moonlight at the temples that hedged the square in on all sides. All of them had been drinking freely, for Rome was a convivial city. Their voices were shrill and loud.

An occasional train of chariots would come galloping down from the Palatium, where Nero and his court feasted and roistered, or directly from the Capitol, where affairs of state kept the imperial officers in uninterrupted bondage. They invariably slowed down to an easy clopping gait through the Forum and then wheeled in various directions, to go clattering with furious haste through the streets that radiated from it. The people scattered to get out of their way and then stopped to jeer angrily after them.

“There seems to be much freedom here,” commented Basil. “I see no signs of a police watch.”

His companion went into an explanation. “There are fire guards. They will pass back and forth through the Forum several times in the course of a night. But the city has no police. The Praetorian Guards are supposed to keep peace in the city, but they are never seen around at night. There are always companies of the Guards at the Palatium, of course, and up on Capitoline Hill.”

“Can it be,” asked Basil, “that the people are given a free hand so they will forget their poverty and the political freedom that has been taken away from them?”

It was clear that Crassus did not allow his religious beliefs to affect his political views. He looked at Basil with a critical air. “Many think there is too much political freedom in Rome,” he said.

Knowing that there were thieves everywhere, they never let their hands get far away from the dagger hilts under their tunics. This constant threat led Basil to ask a question, “What kind of an establishment is this I am going to?”

Crassus did not seem to think well of it. “It is called an inn, but it is really a boarding home, an
insula
, kept by an elderly fellow who is called Old Hannibal. The place is well known because Old Hannibal has a son who is a famous gladiator.”

Basil indulged in a puzzled frown. “It seems a strange place for them to have picked out for me.”

“Not at all,” said Crassus. “There are no Christians in the place and so it is the safest for you.” He proceeded to demonstrate that, for a Christian, his interests went far afield. “The son is called Sisinnes the Unbeaten. I never lay wagers now, but when I was younger I made money all the time by betting on Sisinnes. He is a Samnite; that means he fights in the Arena with the traditional sword and shield of Rome. That makes him popular with the people and they come out roaring for action whenever he is matched. He has never lost a fight. They say he has made himself a fortune by placing wagers on himself. He could have retired long ago but he prefers to go on fighting to add to his wealth.”