The Silver Chalice

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 52–8754

  COPYRIGHT, 1952, BY THOMAS B. COSTAIN

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80060-2

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Book One Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Book Two Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Book Three Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Book Four Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  PROLOGUE

  1

  THE RICHEST MAN in Antioch, by common report, was Ignatius, the dealer in olive oil. He had groves that extended as far as the eye could see in every direction and he lived in a marble palace on the Colonnade. He had been born in the same Pisidian village as Theron, who supported his family by selling ink and pens made of the split ends of reed. Theron found it hard to support his family in a one-room lodging a quite considerable distance away from the Colonnade.

  One day in the heat of summer, when no one ventured out to engage in trade, least of all to buy pens, the great man came on foot to the hole in the wall where Theron sat with his unwanted wares. The latter could not be convinced at first that he was being paid this great honor and was slow in returning the salutation, “Peace be with you.”

  The oil merchant, gasping for breath and slightly purple of cheek, stepped inside to escape the sun, which was beating down on the street with all the fury of the fires of atonement. Making room for himself beside his one-time friend, he went directly to the object of his visit.

  “Theron, you have three sons. I have none.”

  Theron nodded. He realized that he was singularly blessed in the possession of three sons who had survived the hazards of childhood.

  “Is my memory to be lost through lack of children?” asked Ignatius, his voice rising to an unhappy pitch. “Is my spirit to wander after death with no one to come back to, as a moth flies to the flame?”

  The awe Theron had felt at the start was giving place to the ease of old acquaintance. After all, had not he and this corpulent merchant been raised in houses of equal size? Had they not stolen fruit together and fished in the same stream?

  “It is perhaps your thought to adopt a son,” said the seller of pens.

  “My old friend,” said Ignatius, “if you are willing, I shall buy one of your sons and adopt him as my own. He shall have as much love as though he came from my own loins. When the time comes for me to die, he shall inherit everything I possess.”

  Theron’s heart gave an exultant tug, although he did not allow any of the excitement that had taken possession of him to show on the surface. What a wonderful chance for his first-born! To become a man of substance and wealth, to eat his meals off plate of gold and silver, to drink wine cooled by snow from the mountains of the north! Or would it be the second son on whom the favor of the great merchant had descended?

  “Is it Theodore you want?” he asked. “My first-born is a boy of fine parts. He will make a strong man.”

  Ignatius shook his head. “Your Theodore will grow big and have a bulging stomach on him before he is thirty. No, it is not Theodore.”

  “It is Denis, then. My second son is a tall and handsome fellow. And also he is obedient and industrious.”

  The wealthy merchant shook his head a second time. Theron’s heart sank and he said to himself, “It is my good little Ambrose he wants!” Ambrose was turning ten and lived in a thoughtful world of his own, never so happy as when modeling figures out of clay or carving bits of wood. The seller of pens had always known that in his heart he had a preference for Ambrose. The thought of losing him was like a dagger thrust.

  There was nothing unusual about the proposal Ignatius was making. Men without sons sought to remedy the deficiency in this way. The law, as laid down in the Twelve Tables, made no distinction in the matter of inheritance between sons of the flesh and sons by adoption. It was unusual, however, for a man of wealth to think of an alliance with one as poor as a seller of pens. Ignatius could have found a willing candidate in any of the best families of Antioch. Theron, nevertheless, sought feverishly in his mind for some excuse to refuse the offer, saying to himself, “How sad life would be if I parted with my good little Ambrose!”

  After a moment he shook his head. “My third son would not suit you. He is a dreamer, that Ambrose. He has no head on him for figuring. Oh, he is a fine boy and I am overly partial to him; but I can see his faults as well as his good points. He has only one desire in life, and that is to make his little statues out of clay and chalk and wood.” Theron gave his head an emphatic shake as though to conclude the matter. “No, my Ambrose would not suit you.”

  The merchant was a thickset man, as broad across the shoulders as a carrier of water. His head was square, his features rugged. A man who fights his way to the top in trade, and stays there, sees more of warfare than a soldier; for life to him is one long battle, a continual round of buffeting and coming to grips, of tugging and sweating and scheming and hating, with none of the pleasant interludes a soldier enjoys around the campfire in the company of other soldiers, with a wineskin handy and the talk easy and vainglorious. Ignatius carried no scars on his body, but if it had been possible to hold up his soul for inspection like a garment, it would have been revealed as a thing of black bruises and scars, ridged and welted and as callused as a penitent’s knee.

  He leaned forward and placed a hand on the forearm of the seller of pens. If the latter had not been so concerned with the threat to his own happiness, he might have detected a note of supplication in the attitude of the great man.

  “That, friend of my youth, is why I want him.” Ignatius drew his brows into a troubled frown, because the need had now been reached of explaining himself and he doubted his ability to do so adequately. “The Greek nation was great when it had artists to make figures of marble and build beautiful temples of stone. It had men who wrote noble thoughts and who told the history of our race in—in glowing words. Is it not so?”

  Theron nodded. “It is so.” This was the thought that consoled him when troubles gathered around his head, when no one wanted to buy pens and the mother of his three sons railed at him as a good-for-nothing.

  “But now,” went on Ignatius, “we are traders, we are dealers in cattle and corn and ivory and olive oil. Koine has become the language of the world’s trade. I suppose that when people think of Greece today, they think first of men like me.” His eyes, usually so withdrawn and shrewd, had taken fire. “That is wrong, my Theron, and it must be changed. Greece must produce thinkers and tellers of stories and great artists again. And it is in my power, and that of men like me, to bring this about.”

  Theron was listening and watching with amazement. Could this be Ignatius talking, the man most feared in the markets and countinghouses and along the waterfront where the warehouses were so thick they cut off all view of
the shipping at the wharves?

  “When I die,” went on the merchant, with a hint of pride in his manner, “there will be a great fortune to pass on. There will be no need for those who follow me to go on accumulating money and possessions. I want in my place then a man who will see things as I see them now and who will know how to use my wealth to restore some of the real glory of Greece.”

  Theron felt himself in the position of a defending captain who sees the high walls around him being battered down.

  “But,” he demurred, in an effort to find some ground for a last stand, “you know nothing about my third son. Why are you sure he is the one you want?”

  “I never take a step until I know exactly what I want.” Ignatius spoke confidently. “I saw your son once only, but I know much about him. I have seen to it that inquiries were made.

  “I walked one day through the Ward of the Trades, and it was then I saw him,” he went on. “There were a dozen boys together, hopping about and scuffling and fighting—and one who sat against a wall and whittled with a knife at a piece of wood. I stopped and watched him. He was different from the others. I could see that he had a fine and wide brow. The others tried to get him into their games, but he paid no attention. Then one of them went over and snatched away the piece of wood. The boy was on his feet in a trice and fighting to get it back. He fought well. I said to myself, ‘He stands apart and asks only to be left alone, but he’s willing to fight for what is important to him.’ And then I said to myself, ‘This is the boy I want as my son.’ I felt very happy because I had been searching for a long time. I asked one of the other boys who he was and the boy said, ‘His father is Theron, who can tilt a bottle with the best and who sells lampblack and calls it ink.’ And so, Theron, my old friend, I have come to you today to talk of terms.”

  The seller of pens heaved a deep sigh. “You have opened your heart to me, Ignatius. Can I do less?” He spread out his hands in a gesture of reluctant surrender. “My fine little Ambrose is the light of my life. I love him so much that my house will be desolate without him. But what kind of a father is one who lets his own happiness stand in the way of his son’s? It shall be as you desire.” Then he turned with the fierce willingness to barter that the hot sun seems to foster. “There must be five witnesses.”

  “Yes.” The oil merchant realized the distress in the mind of the other man and spoke in a kindly tone. “It will be made legal and tight. Three times you will offer to sell me your son in the presence of the five witnesses and each time one of them will strike the brass scales with the ingot of lead. It shall all be done as the laws prescribe so that your son—no, it must now be said my son—will live with me and Persis, my wife, in full happiness and in the end be possessed of all my wealth.”

  Theron found it hard to speak because of the lump in his throat. “I place a high value on my son. I shall drive a hard bargain with you, Ignatius.”

  Accordingly five witnesses were summoned to hear Theron, clothed for the first time in his life in a spotless white toga (an extravagance at which his thrifty wife had protested bitterly), announce his willingness to sell his son Ambrose to Ignatius, son of Basil. Three times the scales were struck by one of the five, Hiram of Silenus. Hiram was an owner of small olive groves and made his profit by sailing in the wake of the lordly Ignatius; and he considered it the honor of a lifetime to officiate in this capacity. At the finish the new father said: “I shall name my son after my own father, Basil. It is the greatest honor I may pay him, for my father was a great man.”

  “Happy is the son,” said Theron sadly, “who can look up with pride to his father. And happy is the father who can inspire such pride.”

  As he never did anything by halves, Ignatius not only handed over the full amount he was to pay, but he announced to the seller of pens that he had arranged for him and his family to move south to the city of Sidon, where much more remunerative employment had been found for him. Theron agreed at once that this was sensible. The boy, cut off from everything to do with his former life, would more easily fit himself into the new environment. “It will be better if you hear no word from me at all,” he said to the new father. “The sooner the memory of me dims in the boy’s mind, the easier it will be for all of us. Be good to him, old friend.”

  The one flaw in the ceremony had been the absence of the boy. It had been arranged that he was to be given over at once into the custody of his new parents. He had been thoroughly scrubbed and arrayed in the white tunic provided for him, and a handsome leather belt had been buckled about his waist. For a brief moment the boy had known a feeling of pride in the figure he cut; but when Theron was ready to leave, looking every bit as doleful as he felt, there was no trace to be found of the central figure in the transaction. The father went alone, therefore, to the frightening magnificence of the white palace beyond the four tiers of columns on the Great Colonnade while the boy’s mother and his two older brothers (all furiously determined that nothing should prevent the paying over of the handsome sum that was to seal the bargain) went out to search. He was not found until late in the afternoon, crouched behind a pile of faggots in a river warehouse, his face black with soot and streaked with tears. He had not been idle while he remained in concealment. A lump of clay had been modeled into a caricature of the man into whose house he was to go, an unmistakable likeness, although the nose had been given a predatory hook and the ears had been enlarged to suggest extreme greed.

  Theron arrived home on legs that were unsteady and with a wine stain on his white toga. His tongue was thick as he muttered: “I sell honest ink. Never have I given a customer plain lampblack. And I am never drunk.”

  “The wine drips from your ears now!” declared his wife.

  Theron, at any rate, was sober enough to destroy the small bust before taking the boy to his new home.

  2

  Basil, to give him the name by which he was to be called for the rest of his life, had never been inside one of the stone palaces clustering in the neighborhood where the statue of Apollo perched atop the Omphalos and where stood also the gold-sheeted dome of the Temple of Jupiter. His eyes were wide with curiosity when he was led in under the elaborately carved aliyyah protruding out over the main entrance. The floor under his feet in the hall was of yellow stone, and the glowing colors of the tapestries on the walls drew an exclamation of wonder and delight from him. The house, which was three stories in height, was built around a luxuriously green garden, but the latticed windows had all been closed against the heat. There were no signs of life in the garden save the splash of water in a fountain and the occasional note of a bird. “This must be Paradise,” thought the boy.

  Theron bade his son farewell with an air of assumed dignity. “You are going to live in great splendor,” he said. “But if you remember me, little son, let it not be with a sense of shame.”

  He left the boy then in the care of a fiercely handsome major-domo with bristling black whiskers. His name was Castor and there was a shade of condescension in his manner because he knew Basil had been born and raised in the Ward of the Trades. “Come, boy,” he said. “I am to take you at once to the master. The master is a very rich man and one of great power. You will find things strange here.”

  Humility was a quality that was soon beaten out of boys who lived on the other side of the Colonnade. Basil scowled at the major-domo. “The only things strange here,” he said, “is that a eunuch dares to speak thus to the son of the house.”

  Castor found this retort to his liking. He grinned at Basil and said, “We will get along together, you and I.”

  The cool halls of the house were filled with activity as the major-domo led the way up the wide stairs to the rooftop. Servants in fine robes were carrying up dishes of food and flagons of wine and bowls filled with pieces of ice, whispering as they passed each other; whispering about him. Basil realized at once, because there was a great deal of peering over shoulders in his direction and nodding of heads. “Children of filth!” said Castor
, loosening the whip at his belt with furious relish. “Let one of them so much as smirk and they shall feel the sting of this on their behinds!”

  Basil caught his breath in surprise when they reached the housetop. Curious mechanical aids were being used to supply comfort. Water pipes ran along the parapets and tiny streams were spouting forth from perforations in the metal. Fans then wafted the spray in all directions, so that a cool and pleasant mist filled the air with the effect of a perpetual breeze. At the far end, under a draped canopy of yellow silk, was a table of horseshoe shape, spread with silver and glass and an infinite variety of dishes made with a beautiful blue glaze. The table was dimly lighted, and at first the boy did not see the pretty lady reclining on a couch near the head.

  His eyes instead were chained to the space inside the table where four girls in gauzy wide trousers were dancing on large glass balls. They were almost unbelievably expert, jumping from ball to ball like thistledown, spurning one with their feet while leaping to another, keeping all the glittering spheres in constant motion, their eyes laughing, their bare arms weaving to the music which came from instruments somewhere in the gloom. The glass balls tinkled with the clear, sharp sound of bells when they met, and they rolled with magic rhythm over the smooth plaster floor.

  Then the boy became aware of the presence of the lady and he transferred his attention to her. She had, he saw, the fairest of hair and she was beautifully dressed in white and gold. He perceived also that she was taking no interest in the gay little dancers on the gyrating balls. This became apparent at the same time to a stout man who reclined on a couch beside her. He sat up with a resigned shake of his brown head.

  “You are not watching, my loved one,” he said. “It cost me heavily to engage them for your amusement. They come from the very far lands of the East.”

  “No,” answered the lady in a languid voice, “I am not watching the dancers. I have been more interested in this boy. He is, I suppose, our son.”