The Silver Chalice (40 page)

He stripped to his scanty linen tunic and stretched himself out on a blanket. There was an open space to admit air at the peak of the tent, and through it he could see a dense cluster of stars. He studied them for a moment and then closed his eyes.

“I think,” said Luke, “that I shall have a talk with Deborra.”

Basil opened his eyes at once and turned to look at him with an anxious frown. “You will not find her willing to talk. Would it not be kinder to spare her your questions?”

Luke hesitated for a moment only. “No, my son. I think it is necessary to speak to her before you go away. All human troubles can be disposed of when approached in the right way. You will tell me nothing. Have I your permission to ask your wife a few questions?”

Basil was unutterably weary. He had passed through three exacting days, physically and mentally, and he had not slept in that time. His eyes seemed incapable of turning in their sockets when he strove to raise them for a glance at his companion’s face. He allowed them to close again.

“So be it,” he said. “Ask her your questions. I leave this in your hands—and in hers.” Having said this, he fell off soundly to sleep.

Deborra’s maidservant was combing her mistress’s hair when Luke appeared at the entrance of the tent. His “May I enter?” brought an affirmative response before the bride realized that her face was coated with a thick white substance. He looked so startled that, in spite of the troubles that weighed so heavily on her mind, she indulged in a brief smile.

“I should have told you to wait,” she said, “until I had removed all the evidence of my guilty secret. Now you have discovered me in one of my wicked habits; of which, I confess, I have a number. A woman’s skin becomes parched and dry when exposed to the sun of the desert. A cream like this helps it very much. This comes from the East—the very far East. Every caravan that comes in brings a small box for my use. It is delivered with the utmost secrecy.” The maid had succeeded by this time in removing all traces of it from her cheeks. “I know it is considered wrong to use salves and lotions even though Solomon’s Queen of Sheba brought them with her. I do not think it wrong. I think it sensible.”

Luke’s manner made it clear that he desired to speak with her alone, so Deborra dismissed the maid. With her face free of the cream, her weariness and distress of mind were clearly apparent.

“Your husband sleeps in my tent,” said Luke.

Deborra flushed. “Did he make no explanation?”

“None.”

Deborra allowed her hands to fall limply to her lap. She sighed. “It is in accordance with an arrangement we have made.”

“Will you allow me to ask some questions?”

She hesitated and then said, “Yes.”

“If it had not been necessary for Basil to ride ahead, would he have shared your tent?”

“No,” she said with reluctance.

“The arrangement of which you speak was made before the wedding?”

She nodded. “Yes, before. We decided it would be a marriage of form only.”

Luke frowned as though he could neither understand nor condone such an arrangement. “Does he love you?”

“No, he does not love me.”

“And what of you? Do you love him?” Before she could answer he went on: “You must forgive me for probing into your affairs in this way, but I am convinced this is wrong and that something should be done to alter it before it is too late.”

She hesitated for a moment and then answered his question with simple dignity. “I love him truly and deeply, else I would not have married him.”

“I am glad to hear you say that. But why was Basil willing to marry you if, as you say, he does not love you?”

She explained with an air of weariness, “It had been settled, as you know, that I should go to Antioch with the status of a married woman. It had been in my mind that he loved me, but when I found that it was not so, I suggested the marriage of form.”

“With the intention of seeking a divorce later?”

“I do not believe in divorce. But if Basil desires to be free of me later, I will not stand in his way.” She shook her head with an air of hopelessness. “If you please, I would rather not talk about it any more. It is very hard for me to discuss this with anyone.”

“But, my poor child,” said Luke, “I feel a responsibility for what has happened. It was I who pointed out to your grandfather the advisability of arranging a marriage for you before you went to claim your inheritance. I was convinced then that a genuine attraction had grown up between you and Basil. When you told me he was your choice, I was very happy about it. I was certain he was in love with you.”

“So was I.” Her voice quavered. “I would not have spoken to him if I had not felt sure. And then—and then he did not answer me at once and I knew I had taken too much for granted. When he told me about the other woman——”

Luke’s brows drew together in a troubled frown. “Is he in love with another woman?”

“He says not. But he told me that she was—that she was much in his mind. He feels indebted to her because she sent him a warning when he was a slave in Antioch—a warning of the danger in which he stood. It
was because of this that he began to offer up prayers and that you came to take him away.”

“He told me of receiving a note. But he did not know at that time who sent it.”

“She told him when he saw her in Jerusalem. It—it is the woman who assists Simon the Magician.”

Luke had been running his hands through the soft strands of his beard, but at this point he stopped. He stared at Deborra with incredulous eyes. “That infamous woman!” he exclaimed. “It is hard to believe.”

“I found it hard.”

“I have never believed in love potions or spells, counting them no more than silly tricks of the magic trade. Now, for the first time in my life, I find myself inclined to think there are such things. No other explanation seems possible in this case.”

A stern frown had driven all trace of benevolence from Luke’s face. He remained for several moments in an absorbed consideration of the situation. Then, with apparent reluctance, he entered on an explanation. “The leaders of the church of our Master,” he said, “have to be more than evangelical preachers. They have the welfare of the church in their hands and so they require to have some political sense as well. It was recognized that Simon the Magician’s efforts to rob men of their belief in the divinity of Jesus would have to be met. Certain inquiries about him were made. As a result we have learned many things since Simon made his appearance in Jerusalem, things about him and about this woman Helena as well. After running away from her master in Antioch, she lived with a number of men before Simon. It may be that the need will never arise to use this—or any of the shoddy things that have been discovered in the record of Simon, that very bad Samaritan. I trust not. But”—the frown on the usually benign brow became still more pronounced—“something must be done to cure this foolish boy of his interest in the woman. Does he know you are in love with him?”

“No, no! I—I have tried to maintain some reticence about my feelings.” Deborra’s eyes filled with tears of weariness. “He is no happier than I am. I don’t think he knows what we expect of him. We have told him he must not do things that had always seemed right and natural. We tried to make him change his way of thinking to ours. I am sure he is mixed up in his mind and that he made the confession to me because he thought it was the Christian way of acting.”

After a moment’s thought Luke nodded in agreement. “You are right,
my child. The poor fellow is befuddled by our preaching at him.” He laid a comforting hand on hers. “I came to suggest that you make an effort to bring him to his senses, even to the extent of letting him see the state of your feelings. Can it be done?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No, my kind friend. I can do nothing more until he comes to me and says—the things I must hear him say. To do anything else would be a sure way of losing him.”

“But are you prepared to go on like this? To be a married woman without a husband? To make your life a sham? Surely, little Deborra, there is something you can do.”

“Yes, there is something I can do.” She achieved a smile, although it could not have been described as a cheerful one. “I can wait.”

Basil came to the tent of Deborra in a woolen cloak that swathed him warmly from neck to ankles, for the air had turned sharply cold. In recognition perhaps of the biting proclivities of Ezer he had strapped the faded leather pads about his shins. A small bundle of clothing, a very small one, was slung over his shoulder.

“We are leaving now,” he said.

Deborra had not been able to sleep. She had slept so little, in fact, since her return to Jerusalem that her eyes seemed to have grown in size until they dominated her face. Nothing had been requisitioned from the last of the little boxes to lend her color, and so her cheeks were pale.

As soon as the first sound of his approaching footsteps had reached her ears a thought had begun to throb in her mind: “I love him, I love him, I love him!” Now she asked herself, “Can I let him go like this? Should I not make one effort?” None of this inner struggle showed in her face, however, and she spoke in a quiet voice. “I dread to think of the hardships ahead of you. But I have been considering and I can understand why you feel it necessary to go. I will pray for your safety and well-being, Basil.”

She was holding a pewter bowl in which a wick was floating in a bed of oil. By this rather feeble light he could see the paleness of her cheeks and the studied control of her expression. There were two beds on the ground. In the one that he, as her husband, might have occupied, the maidservant Sarah was lying. She had wakened and he could see that she was watching them through half-closed eyes.

“We have discussed our route with Adam,” he explained. “As you will follow the same course, you will have word of us at every stop you make. I believe,” he added, “that we will reach Antioch in time.”

“Yes,” she said in a low tone, “I am sure of that.”

He touched the pouch at his belt. “I have the letter to the banker. It should serve to delay any decision until you arrive.”

She voiced a fear that had been in her mind since he had decided to go. “Will there be any danger for you in Antioch?”

“My freedom was purchased legally and I carry the document that attests it. I have so little fear that I intend to make an effort to see my mother. Linus will probably refuse to let me in, but I shall try.”

“Take every care,” she urged. “You must remember that Linus has become a man of great power.”

“I will take every care. That much I promise you most solemnly. I shall do nothing that might prevent me from finishing the Chalice.”

“Basil——!” She did not continue with the words that had risen unbidden to her lips, but she said them to herself with a passionate intensity: “I cannot bear to let you go like this! Say you will put this foreign woman out of your mind! Say you will try to love me instead!”

All that she put aloud into words was a question: “Are you sufficiently rested?”

“I slept soundly for three hours and now I feel fresh and ready for our adventure.”

They touched hands lightly and briefly. Basil adjusted the bundle over his shoulder. “Farewell,” he said.

“Farewell. May Jehovah look down on you and give you His protection.”

T
HAT FIRST NIGHT
the two riders drove on steadily through the darkness, then through the glory of the dawn and on into the freshness of the hours of early morning. They desisted only when the sun reached a high place in the heavens and began to unlimber the full fury of its attack. Stretching themselves out on the sand, they slept with cloaks spread to shade their heads, while Bildad and Ezer contentedly munched capparis and sunt leaves and nebbuk bushes, snorting with pleasure over the salty flavor of an occasional leaf of salsola. In four hours, the bitterness of the solar assault having abated, they were up and off again.

Two episodes occurred during the second day that astonished Basil in his complete ignorance of the ways of the camel. Something had happened to cause a sense of grievance in the tiny brain of Bildad. His resentment showed itself in an unwillingness to be pressed, in much snorting and tossing of his muzzle, in an occasional backward snap in the hope of catching some portion of his rider’s anatomy in his powerful, projecting teeth.

Chimham was puzzled. “What have I done to this old rascal?” he asked aloud. “I am not aware of any injury, but it is clear he is in one of his very worst fits.” He was finding it necessary to keep his dagger out and to strike with the handle whenever the head of the camel swung around. “He must be placated or I shall come to some serious injury.”

He called,
“Kharr!”
and the angry camel, through force of habit, came to a halt. With much snorting and whining it reached a kneeling position, and the rider sprang quickly to the ground. Removing his tunic, he tossed it in front of Bildad and then retreated in great haste.

Something happened then that roused Basil abruptly from the almost
comatose condition to which he had been reduced by the heat. Bildad seized the garment in his fierce teeth and proceeded to tear it into shreds and tatters. The infuriated camel brought his forefeet into play to complete its destruction, stamping on it furiously. The tunic was soon reduced to pulp, but the animal continued to vent his anger on it with a high screeching.