The Silver Chalice (79 page)

“I have so much to tell you,” he whispered.

“Are you going to tell me all the things I said you must before—before we could put our misunderstandings behind us?” The small spat of rain was over completely; her eyes were bright and wide with content. “It is no longer necessary. You have told me everything I wanted to know. And without saying a word.”

“But I have so many words!” he cried. “It will take days and weeks and years to say them all. And they will be very much alike. I will be saying the same things over and over again. That I love you, love you, love you. That you are the most beautiful and bravest woman in the world. That I treasure the little white lobe of your ear and the tip of your nose, which has such a pretty curl to it, and the light in your eyes. Nothing else will ever matter. I shall go on telling you these things as long as I live.”

“You will have a willing listener,” she whispered. “Oh, Basil, I shall be such a greedy listener! I am sure you will never say enough words like that to satisfy me.”

Luke had followed her out from the supper table at a discreet distance and was standing in the shadows of the court. Sensing his presence, Deborra stepped back from her husband’s embraces.

“Basil is back,” she called to him. “And he is very brown and strong from his journeyings. He has not had a chance yet to tell me his news, but there is something in his eyes that makes me believe he has succeeded in everything he set out to do.”

Luke came forward then. It was apparent at once that he had been existing under a heavy load of anxiety, for he looked older and very tired. His face seemed to carry as many fine lines as the palm of the hand.

“My son,” he said, “I too suspect that the large bundle at your feet is filled with sheaves of your garnering. But as I stood back there in the court I could not help seeing something that pleased me quite as much. May I now rest content in my belief that you and my precious Deborra are—are as much in accord as your attitudes suggested?”

They said “Yes!” to that simultaneously and then smiled at each other. Deborra placed a hand under Basil’s arm and pressed her head against his shoulder. “I think we are in a rather perfect accord, Father Luke,” she said.

“There is much to be told about my visit to Rome,” declared Basil. “It
is true that I succeeded in doing all the things that took me there. But there are other things to tell you. The situation is very serious.”

“The serious news must wait until you have had your supper,” said Luke. He smiled at them with deep affection. “Bless you, my two children. You look so very happy together.” He would have said more, but he had become aware of the sweetmeat vendor standing outside the door with the tray still on his head. “Why is Hananiah here?” he asked. “Has he come with information?”

The old man advanced a pace within the door. “You have, it is clear, much more pleasant things to discuss than the information I bring. Perhaps you will allow me, Luke, to speak a few words in your ear and then take my departure.”

“I have been very neglectful,” said Deborra. She ran a hand quickly over her dark locks to restore them to order. “Will you forgive me, Hananiah, for not seeing you there? It is an occasion when a husband comes back from a very long journey, and that must be my excuse. Come, we will all go in to supper.”

“I have little appetite,” said the old vendor, hesitating in the doorway.

He allowed himself, nevertheless, to be relieved of his tray. After he and Basil had bathed their faces and hands they went in to the table, where several leaders of the Antioch church were sitting.

“My husband has returned!” cried Deborra. “I am afraid I shall be an inattentive hostess for the rest of the evening. I want to sit beside him and listen to him and be very happy that he has come back safely and well.” She added after a moment in a gay tone, “And now that I have made my apologies in advance, I hope you will forgive me and make yourselves at home.”

There was an immediate demand for the news from Rome, and so Basil proceeded with his story, holding back one part only, his visit to Kester of Zanthus. Deborra, sitting close beside him, watched his face in the intensity of her interest, but she lowered her eyes when he began to speak about Simon the Magician and Helena, as though she did not want to spy on his thoughts. Her head came up with a startled abruptness when he told of the manner in which they had died.

“I did not see anything that happened that day,” said Basil. “It was necessary for me to remain in hiding. I left the day after, and all Rome was filled with the story.” His manner became subdued and he lowered his voice. “I was told that she died bravely. As bravely as the little dancer for whose death she had been responsible.”

Deborra, pale and shaken with the story, whispered in his ear, “I am feeling very sorry for her.” He nodded back. “Yes, I too had deep regrets. I warned her to leave, but she had become very antagonistic to me at that time and paid no attention.”

The part of his story that won the closest attention from the serious group around the table was Peter’s prediction of the persecution of the Christians in Rome and of the great impetus it would supply to the spread of Christ’s teachings throughout the world. They discussed it with grave faces and in tones that expressed the fears it had aroused.

After the guests had gone, Deborra went to her room and returned quickly in a dark blue coat that was padded and tufted and most beautifully embroidered with gold thread. Her eyes showed signs of tears.

Basil was so dismayed at this seeming proof of a changed mood that he took her face in his hands and looked into her eyes with a puzzled frown. “Tears?” he said. “Have you been weeping, my love? Are you not happy?”

“Oh, Basil, yes!” she cried. “I am so happy that I cannot make up my mind which to do, whether to laugh or cry. So I do both. But the tears you see in my eyes now are for those two poor women who were killed in such cruel ways—and for all the women in Rome who are going to die.” Then she blinked her eyes free and smiled. “I have bundled myself up warmly so that we can go out into the gardens. Do you remember, my husband, that at supper on the night when you left I sat at a table all by myself and that you came over and seated yourself beside me? We went into the garden later and you kissed me; and I knew that you were coming to love me after all. I have seen to it that the servants have not moved the chairs in which we sat. Everything is just as it was—like a shrine—and no one else has been allowed to sit there. Let us go out now and take the same chairs; and talk and talk and talk until the hunger that I have to hear your voice has been satisfied a little.”

There was a chill in the air when they reached the court, and Deborra shuddered. She snuggled her chin down into the warm wrap.

“This is a gift,” she said. “From that sweet old prince. He gave it to me before he left. You do not know that he died on reaching Bagdad and they took his body back to his own country to be buried. Chimham brought us the news when he returned.”

“I am sorry he came to such a sudden end. His death must have upset all of Chimham’s plans.”

“Not seriously.” Deborra began to laugh. “He amuses me so much, that funny Chimham. I don’t think it possible to upset him seriously. He bought goods in Bagdad and loaded the two camels you gave him, and then he sold everything here in Antioch at a very good profit. You need never worry about him; he is going to be a rich man. The last time I saw him he was preparing to start back for the East with an extra camel and two helpers. He looked prosperous and rather fat, and very,
very
pompous. He brought back something else from Bagdad. Can you guess?”

“Another wife?” cried Basil.

Deborra laughed delightedly. “You have guessed it. Another wife. A very fat and cute little woman who giggles a great deal and rolls when she walks. She comes from a country much farther east and speaks a strange language. They cannot exchange a word and have to depend on signs still. When Chimham wants to tell her he is pleased, he kisses her. When he is annoyed, he boxes her ears. When he wants her to go anywhere, he points and gives her a pat on—well, on whatever part of her happens to be nearest. The last time I saw them together, he showed signs of being rather tired of all this—this pantomime.”

“I am fond of Chimham,” said Basil, “but I cannot understand why he is so determined to set himself up as another Solomon and fill houses with his wives.”

Deborra laid a hand on his arm when they reached the arched enclosure. “We must take the same chairs,” she said. “I have planted a shrub out in the garden at the exact spot where you kissed me. I water it every day and it is growing beautifully.”

“Every evening at the same time I will lead you out there and kiss you again. It will be a ritual we will never forget.”

Deborra cried excitedly: “How strange that you thought of saying that! It was what I was going to suggest. But I am so happy that you thought of it—and said it first!”

Basil took down Deborra’s
kinnor
, which was hanging on the wall back of them, and began to strum on it. “There was a sailor on the ship coming back who was from the south of Gaul,” he said. “It is a warm and gentle land and this man had a fine voice. He sang many songs of his country. This is one of them. I am playing it because the words went something like this: ‘Envy the sailor, because he sees only the green waters and the scudding winds and the deep blue of the sky. Envy the maker of gems, because he gazes constantly into the beautiful souls that have been caught and preserved in transparent stone. Envy me, because
I come home to my little house at the edge of the woods and find Thee.’ ”

Deborra had tucked her feet under her skirt to keep warm and had muffled her hands in the ample sleeves of the oriental robe. “It is a lovely song,” she said happily.

“I am going to write verses of my own to sing to the air,” he declared. “The first will begin, “Envy me, because I have come home and seen Thee, my Deborra, with new eyes.’ There will be a hundred verses to tell you what I see with these observant new eyes of mine. There will be one to the wave in your hair above your forehead, and one to the bold curl in front of your ear, and one to the shy curl that hides behind it. There will be verses to the sweetness of your smile and the smallness of your feet and the dimple in your elbow, which I would be happy to kiss this instant if you did not have your arms tucked so comfortably into your sleeves.”

“I hope you will never stop writing new verses,” said Deborra, stretching out her arm to him.

“I shall be writing them all through eternity.”

When they retired finally into the house, she took him to his rooms on the floor above and pointed out where his bundles had been placed. “You need new clothes very badly,” she said with a stern shake of her head. “You are quite shabby. It will be the first duty of your wife to see that you are made to look less like a beggar at the city gates.”

They stood close together in a silence that lasted for several moments, looking gravely and intently into each other’s eyes.

“You have much work to do still on the Chalice,” she whispered. “Will you begin tonight?”

He gave a sober nod in answering. “It is true that I have much to do still. But——”

Deborra moved a little closer and smiled up at him. She needed none of the wiles which the lady Antonia’s maids had taught her. Circe’s Secret would have been superfluous at this moment. Her eyes were wide and shining, her color was high, her lips were slightly parted.

“Do you remember,” he asked, “when there was the first hint of romance between us?”

She nodded eagerly. “It was when the Roman soldiers chased us. Listen, Basil. Do you hear it too? It is men’s feet running after us and shields clashing and voices shouting. But they did not catch us, did they?”

She turned at that and began to run away across the room. Basil
bounded after her. When they had raced together through Mount Moriah and down into the valley, he had found it hard to keep up with her, but he had no such difficulty now. In a few strides he had overtaken her and had gathered her up into his arms. He raised her high off the ground, with one arm encircling her waist, the other under her knees.

“Did you think I would let you get away?” he demanded.

“I do not think,” she answered, pressing her face deeply into the hollow of his shoulder, “that I wanted to get away.”

He paused when he reached the entrance to her rooms and then slowly and with due ceremony carried her across the threshold.

When Basil wakened he heard Deborra stirring about in her room. This was unusual, for she was generally tardy about getting up. He hesitated. “I should not go in,” he said to himself. “And yet how can I wait to see her again?”

So he went in and found that she was standing beside the laver in the act of giving her face a very thorough scrubbing. A single garment had been wrapped about her, leaving her arms and shoulders bare and even displaying her ankles rather fully. She looked so young and slender, and so very desirable that he stood for several moments and considered her with awe and devotion.

“I should not have come in,” he said finally. “Do you mind?”

She lowered her hands from her face to smile at him. “You are my husband and I love you,” she said. “Why should I mind?”

At that he took her in his arms and kissed her. “I did not realize before,” he murmured, “that the very best time for a husband to kiss his wife is when her cheeks are damp.”

“I have been scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing my face in order to get myself thoroughly awake,” said Deborra. “You know that I am never myself early in the morning. But
this
morning I must be bright. I must keep my husband interested and pleased.”

“But was it necessary to rise so early?” he asked, smiling at the earnestness of her expression.

“Oh yes, it was necessary indeed. This is going to be a wonderful day and I do not want to miss a single minute of it.”

The wonderful day began, however, with Basil laying out his tools and
getting ready for work. Deborra had half expected this, but she made one effort to convert him to a better method of spending the day. “I had hoped,” she said, “that you would do no work. We could go for a day in the woods and take my dog with us and have a thoroughly idle time. Do you not think it would be pleasant?”