The Silver Chalice (59 page)

A few moments later a heavy tread sounded on the creaking stairs and an apparition appeared in the room that caused Basil to gape with surprise. The newcomer was tall and proportionately broad for his inches. As he wore nothing but a loincloth, it could be seen that his arms and legs were magnificently thewed and that his chest was like that of the god who held the heavens suspended above the earth on pillars. He paused and gave his limbs a luxurious stretch.

“I have decided to do no exercising until I have broken bread,” he announced. His voice was curiously high and thin. It ascended suddenly in a screech of command. “Cephas! Cephas!”

The old man came running through the dirty linen curtains that screened the entrance to the kitchen. “Yes, Brother Sisinnes? What is it you wish?”

“Food,” said the gladiator. “I am famished.”

Cephas disappeared behind the curtains and returned in several minutes with the first dish, which he placed at the head of the table. It steamed deliciously, and Sisinnes the Unbeaten lost no time in applying himself to it. “Good, very good,” he said, looking at the others, who had remained where they were. Basil had risen with a sharp appetite and he was preparing to take a seat at the other end of the table when the man Vardish laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“We do not sit down until the last dish is on the table,” he explained. “It is a rule of the house.”

“But,” said Basil, motioning toward the gladiator, who was already deep in the dish, “he has started his meal.”

The other man shook his head. “The rules never apply to Sisinnes.”

Cephas, his face red with his exertions, ran back and forth, bringing in dish after dish. He grouped them around the first one. Sisinnes examined each as it arrived, tasted it, and either nodded his head in approval or grunted in criticism. Finally the array was complete and Cephas raised his voice to announce the fact.

“You may sit down,” he said.

There was a rush to the table and a scramble to get seats as close to the head as possible. Sisinnes scowled at them. “Mind your manners,” he grumbled. “This haste is unseemly.” He suspended his eating long enough to begin passing the dishes to those closest to him, for none had dared to reach out a hand. He raised a platter of fish and looked at it. “There is one fine fat fellow here,” he said. His eye went up and down the line. “I allot it to Vardish. He is looking even more puny than usual this morning.”

“What of me?” cried one of the others. “I also am undernourished and in need of every scrap of food I can get.”

“You?” snorted the gladiator. “You remain thin through sheer gluttony. I have been watching you and seeing what tremendous quantities of food you waste on that miserable body of yours. You will have nothing but a head or a tail this morning.” He scowled at the spectacle of the many heads bent over plates. “You will bring ruin to my poor father by your gourmandizing.”

Sitting at the far end, Basil did not understand any of this talk. He was not faring very well. The dishes were practically empty when they reached him. Cephas paused behind him to whisper: “Do not despair. A fine fish has been kept on the fire for you. You will have it out there. It will be hot, and the cook is making one of her best sauces for it.”

The low conversation at the foot of the table drew the gladiator’s attention to them. “Whispering?” he said. “Is it something you are keeping from me? And who is this underfed youth? Is he a night traveler, a bat who comes in the hours of darkness?” He indulged in another scowl. “Why is it that every traveler whose stomach has fallen in through starvation finds his way here?”

“The young man is from Antioch,” explained Cephas. “His ship arrived last night.”

Sisinnes studied Basil with a critical eye. “Is he a Greek?”

“Yes, Brother Sisinnes.”

“I have fought a few Greeks in my time. They are graceful and fast on their feet, but I had no difficulty with any of them. I soon finish off these dancing masters. The spectators always turned their thumbs down on them, and so death it had to be. They like a man who goes in and fights it out, blow for blow.” He was holding a huge slice of melon to his face, and nothing could be seen of him but his eyes. “Only once have I found it necessary to fight for my life. It was a hulking Goth who used a weapon he called a pike. He was as strong as a brass bull.”

“Did you kill him?” asked one of the guests.

The gladiator shook his head. “He fought so stubbornly that they did not turn down their thumbs. But he never fought again. His injuries were too great. I heard not so long ago that he died.” He reached out and pinioned the questing wrist of the man opposite him. “Keep your greedy hands off the grapes. I have not made my selection yet.”

A few minutes later, his hands filled with fruit, the gladiator got to his feet and left the table. “Come now, the lot of you. There has been enough of this stuffing. You will all get up from the table.”

The guests obeyed without a word of protest. The benches were shoved back as they got up, their eyes fixed longingly on the dishes where some scraps of food were left.

“I shall now get to work,” announced Sisinnes the Unbeaten. “I must be in condition for next week. I am to fight a Scythian. He is a retiarius and fights with the net. I shall have to chase him all over the Arena. It will be the worse for him.”

One of the guests had seemed more filled with curiosity than appetite. He had eaten very little, and when most of the guests trooped out to the yard to watch Sisinnes at his delayed exercises, this man engaged those who remained in whispered conversations. Basil saw that Hannibal had parted the linen curtains and was looking in, his face wearing an expression of unease.

“Who is it?” he asked Cephas in a whisper.

“He is asking questions,” answered the old man. “They never stop. Always it is someone new who does the questioning, but always the questions are the same. He will be asking about our young man from Antioch.”

Seated in the kitchen and eating with relish the fish that had been reserved for him, Basil was told that the low-voiced questioner was one of the men of Tigellinus, the head of the policing force that Nero was instituting. “They are getting the names of all the Christians in Rome,” whispered Cephas. “We do not know what he means to do, this wicked young Emperor who has killed his evil mother and his wife. But this much we can be sure of: his plans are evil plans.”

“What will he do about the Christians?” asked Basil.

Cephas had begun work on the scrubbing of the dishes. “The days of persecution are drawing nigh,” he said. “We are sure that the hour will soon strike.”

“Is that why Peter has come to Rome?”

The old man did not pause in his labors. “I think it is one of his reasons.”

“It is a good thing that my son is here,” said Hannibal, who was keeping pace with Cephas in his work, his thin and heavily veined hands moving ceaselessly. “It puts us above suspicion.”

“But the questioners still come,” said the old man.

Basil had decided to rest for the first day. He did not, however, join the others in the yard to watch the mighty Sisinnes at work. Instead he decided to satisfy the curiosity that had been roused in him by the position of Cephas in the household. During the first few hours he kept a close eye on the activities of the old man, noting how continuously he worked, and with what zest, as though he felt an urgency to serve. He slept, Basil discovered, under a metal lean-to at the rear of the house. His bundle of bedclothing, most scrupulously clean, had already been spread out in the sun. He seemed completely absorbed in the trivial but wearisome tasks that fell to his share and completely content in carrying them out. His face was serene, if not entirely happy; and only occasionally would he fall into a sort of reverie, when his gaze would become fixed on the sky or on the parched leaves of the lone tree in the yard and his thoughts would go to something far off.

Studying him at these odd moments when the old man allowed himself the privilege of dreaming, Basil realized that his face had an unusual quality. It was round, with a broad brow and eyes widely spaced, a somewhat aggressive nose, a strong mouth that reflected all his emotions openly.

The fingers of the young artist had been idle for weeks. It was time they were put to work, he decided, and accordingly he brought out his tools and clay and set himself the task of reproducing the features of the inn drudge. It had to be done with the benefit of no more than occasional glimpses of the subject, for the old man hurried from room to room on his broad bare feet and seemed unaware of what was being done.

It may have been that the face of Cephas lent itself particularly well to the purpose; it proved to be, at any rate, the easiest portrait Basil had ever attempted. The likeness came into the clay at once: the broad brow, the intent deep eyes, the big-boned nose that seemed to have suffered
the flattening effect of a blow; above all, the air of resolution, the kindly forthrightness. In an hour the portrait had been completed. Instinct as well as training told its creator that anything more would be superfluous. An additional pressure of finger on clay would detract rather than add.

He carried it out to the kitchen, where Cephas was scrubbing the brick floor with decisive movements of his still strong arms. The old man straightened up with an effort, pressing one hand to his back in doing so. He stared at the clay model in bewilderment.

“Young man, who are you?” he asked. “To very few is such a gift as this given.”

“Do you think it a likeness?”

Cephas smiled. “I have not inspected myself in a mirror in many years. But you have me; there can be no doubt of that. I am quite astounded. Is it to do work of this kind that you have come to Rome?”

Basil seated himself in a corner of the kitchen, which was shaded from the sun and so retained still some share of the coolness of the early morning. He placed the model on a corner of the table with the satisfaction an artist takes in praise.

“Have you ever heard of one Joseph of Arimathea?” he asked.

Cephas had gone back to his work. He nodded without looking up. “I have heard of him. The great merchant of Jerusalem.”

“He is dead.”

The busy hands stopped. For several moments Cephas remained in silence, a sudden sadness on his face and his strong frame showing a tendency to droop. “Joseph of Arimathea is dead!” he said in a whisper. “That splendid old man, that strong right arm of the true faith, that prop in times of stress and trouble! He was very old, but—he had come to seem immortal. Now that you have told me this distressing news, I realize that I have never considered the possibility of Joseph’s death.”

“There is something I must tell you that concerns him. It is a strange story and it is because of it that I have come to Rome.” Basil paused. “Because Luke sent me here, and from things I have heard you say, I am sure you are a Christian. And perhaps Hannibal also. Do you want to tell me if this is so?”

The old man rose to his feet and seated himself at the table, facing Basil. “In Rome one no longer says openly and freely for all to hear, ‘I am a Christian.’ It might lead to punishment, perhaps to death. A Christian must not fear death, but one must be ready to live and work for the purposes of the Lord as well as die for them. It is wrong to rush
blindly to martyrdom. It is for Him to decide when the service of living no longer suffices and the time has come to look into the face of the angel of death.”

Through the open door of the kitchen they could hear the grunting of Sisinnes as he still continued with his muscular preparations for the bout ahead of him. Cephas leaned his head across the table and began to whisper. “I speak to you in full candor because you have come to us with the hand of Luke. If you need this assurance before telling anything more, then speak on. We are both Christians, Hannibal and I. There are no others in the house, nor is there any suspicion in the minds of those out there that we belong.”

Basil, accordingly, told of Joseph’s plan for the making of the Chalice and of his own part in it. The old man’s manner changed as he listened. He seemed to lose the stoop of age, he held his head erect, his eyes became watchful and intent. Had Basil observed closely he would undoubtedly have seen that Cephas had taken on authority, but his interest was in the narration, and the only impression he gained was of the deep interest of his auditor.

At the finish of the story Cephas remained silent for several minutes, his eyes fixed on the clay model that stood at his side. It was a convincing proof that there was truth in the story he had heard.

Finally Cephas began to speak. “There has been among us much anxiety about the Cup and so there will be rejoicing when what you have told me becomes generally known.” He nodded his head with an intensity of satisfaction. “Your story has brought me much happiness. How grateful we will all be to the good Joseph—and to you for the part you have played. But, my young friend, a word of warning: do not tell your story to anyone else. Keep it locked away. There would be danger for you in such a telling. This, however, I may say to you: at the proper time you will be taken to Peter. He is in Rome, and it is in his mind that he will finish his days here. But he has to be very careful and so he is seen little, and he also waits.”

“I had hoped to return to Antioch quickly,” said Basil. “I will have much work to do in finishing the Chalice. And my wife waits for me there.”

Cephas smiled warmly. “A month, a week, a few days. Does it matter much? I have lived so many years that I have ceased to count the days as important. But with you, I see, it is different. You are young and impatient. You have a loving wife waiting your return. Every day to you
is like a year. And so I shall use what influence I may have to make it possible for you to finish what you have come to Rome to do.”

He had started to pace up and down the room. His plain brown tunic, which was ragged along the lower hem, had been drawn up above his knees to give his limbs more freedom of movement. He paused beside Basil at one point and said in a whisper that did not carry even to the open door: “You asked me a question and received the answer. Now I ask you the same. I think I know what you will say, else Luke would not have sent you here; but I should like to hear it from your own lips.”