The Silver Chalice (10 page)

He continued to talk about the household of the great merchant in Jerusalem, but Basil had ceased to listen. The fever had resumed its hold and his mind had lost itself in strange and disjointed dreams.

The fever did not leave him finally until after ten days of continuous travel. They had progressed by that time beyond the lower tip of the Sea of Galilee and had camped by the ford of the Wadi Farah, which meanders slowly across the plain to join the fast-flowing waters of the Jordan. Basil had slept well and wakened with a clear head and a new feeling of energy in his veins. He gazed with wonder at the high hills to the west in which nestled, he had been told, the fruitful valleys of Samaria. It was pleasant in the cool of dawn, the air filled with the songs of birds in the palm trees and the mulberries, the sky shot across with brilliant streamers of color.

“What is the name of that highest peak?” he asked.

“Mount Ebal,” answered Adam shortly. “Ask me no more questions about the land of the cursed Cutheans. Listen! They are stirring back there on the other side of the ford. In a moment there will be something worth your notice.”

The night before a large party had come to the ford and had camped on the other side. “They are nearly through with their prayers,” said Adam in a whisper of the deepest respect. “The Standing Man is ready to begin.”

He had barely finished speaking when a voice was raised on the other side of the water, crying, “Arise ye! And let us go up to Zion and to Jehovah, our God!”

The rest of the company obeyed the summons by getting to their feet and beginning a chant, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of Jehovah.”

This was a familiar spectacle to Adam. At this season of the year each of the twenty-four districts into which Palestine had been divided sent parties to Jerusalem, in charge of an official who was called the Standing Man, taking with them the First Fruits to be offered to God. It was the custom of the farmers to select the best of everything, the finest heads of grain, the largest and ripest grapes, the most succulent bunches of dates, and to place them in wicker baskets as white as snow or even in containers of gold or silver in which they would be carried to the Temple. But to Basil it was all strange and he watched with the greatest interest.

The company was now approaching the ford with the sound of flutes to set the pace of the march. They were beginning to chant the first of the Songs of Ascents.

Adam was filled with pride in this demonstration of the abiding faith of his people. He gave Basil a vigorous buffet on the shoulder and pointed to the files of earnest men marching down to the water.

“Look at them!” he said. “They all live by the Law of Moses. It was thus they came down behind Joshua for the Passover. These men slept in the open last night to avoid defilement, and some of them kept watch over the First Fruits. Now they will tread the long roads to the Holy City, singing as they go. Does it not stir your blood to see how faithfully they keep all the customs of their fathers? Listen to the words they are singing.”

The pilgrims had reached the third of the Songs of Degrees and were reverently intoning the words:

Adam’s eyes were gleaming happily. “When they come within sight of the hill on which the Temple stands,” he said, “the priests and Levites will come out to bid them welcome, and as they climb the steps they will continue to sing songs of praise to Jehovah. And this they do each year.”

The overseer had seen to it that the laborious packing for the day’s journey had been done early. Basil climbed into his
musattah
briskly, calling to Adam, “I feel well enough to do fifty miles today.”

Adam was still watching the procession of the First Fruits. “We, the children of Israel, take our religion seriously,” he said. “And we are the only people in the world who do. I will tell you about that.”

He proceeded to do so after the camel train had started and he had ranged himself beside the young artist. “One day,” he began, “I was tempted to commit a sin. Not one of your puny sins, the kind that stupid little men commit every day, but a great, black, terrible sin. As I considered it, I felt that a hand was suspended over my head, ready to strike. I knew what it was: it was the hand of Moses. He has been dead for thousands of years, that wrathful man, and yet no Jew can commit a wrong today without fearing that Moses will punish him personally for it. It was Moses who taught us that the Sabbath must be kept. Master Basil, have you noticed that my left arm is stiff at the elbow? I get little use of it. When I was a boy I broke it on the Sabbath and my father would not permit anything to be done for it until the following day.”

He was silent for a moment and then he began to deliver an address on the merits of his people. “To the Jew who lives abroad the Temple is the center of all spiritual life. He has his own synagogue, but it is to the Holy of Holies that he turns. He longs to share in its activities. It has become our custom to send out word from Jerusalem when the paschal moon rises. It’s done by a string of beacon fires lighted on the tops of hills. As soon as the moon lifts its pale head above the horizon, the beacon fires flash and in a matter of minutes the Jews, even those as far away as Babylon, know that the paschal light is flooding the Holy City. They walk out on their housetops and stretch their arms toward Jerusalem. And a great peace and happiness take possession of them.

“But the cursed Cutheans”—a term of contempt the Jews used in speaking of Samaritans—“know of this and they envy us a custom in which they are not permitted to share. They try to interfere. They light other fires on hilltops—at the wrong times, of course. When this happens, the custodians of the sacred beacons become confused and do not know which lights to believe.

“Once,” he continued with a note of satisfaction in his voice, “I was riding by night from Damascus. Off there in the direction of Mount Ebal I saw a light spring up on a hilltop and I knew they were playing their tricks again. I took my men to the hill, and there we found them, a score of grinning Cutheans, piling wood on the blaze and laughing and capering about.” He threw back his head in a loud laugh of enjoyment. “We drubbed them from the hills and we trampled out the fire; and we sent down word into the smug valleys where they live in slothful ease that if they interfered again with the holy paschal fires we would set a torch to Shechem and Sebaste. That took away their appetite for tricks.”

He seemed no longer aware that he had hearers. With eyes fixed straight ahead and his voice raised to an oratorical pitch, he declaimed the glories of his race. He recited stories from the Book of Jashar, gesticulating with his one good arm. He kept returning to the point of view with which he had started, that truth dwelt only in the Jew and that all other religions were no more than lip service to idols. This continued literally for hours. He seemed tireless. At the end of each story he would straighten himself and look up into the sky, where the sun was blazing, and he would shout out loudly, as though in defiance of the world, the words of the creed. To Basil, now half a dozen camel lengths behind, it seemed that everything in between was a jumble of words, and all he could distinguish was the phrase so often repeated:

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is One God!

I
T WAS THE CUSTOM
in Jerusalem to face the Temple when out of doors. To abide by this rule men had to control their walking and standing so that the great white building would always be partially in the eye, even looking back over the shoulder when going in the opposite direction.

This was a simple matter from the house of Joseph of Arimathea. It stood on the brink of the western hill above the Cheesemakers’ Valley, and from there the horizon was dominated by the house of the one God on the slope of Mount Moriah, its marble walls brilliant against the turquoise of the sky, its gold-sheeted roof with tall spikes of the precious metal proclaiming the wealth and power and the reverence of the race which had raised it.

By way of contrast, the Cheesemakers’ Valley was a belt of squalor separating the mount of the Temple from the activities of the upper and lower cities. As though striving to escape from its stifling heat and noisome discomfort, the houses of the cheesemakers climbed up the slopes, one on top of another, tiny structures of stone with flat roofs and a thick overgrowth of stout vines. It was a simple matter to mount from roof to roof, and many a fugitive from the law had escaped in that way, with the help of the repressed people who lived on the slope. The route most commonly taken was called the Goat’s Walk; and at the end of it the climber found himself facing a door of imposing proportions in a wall of marble. This was the house of Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthiest man in Jerusalem, some said in the whole world. As Joseph had not placed a foot outside the great bronze-studded door in ten years, he had grown into a myth to the poor people whose homes clung precariously below him
like pods on a beanstalk. Boys, who are always lacking in proper reverence, sometimes clambered up from the Valley in noisy groups and chanted in front of the door: “Ha, rich man, we are cubs of the poor cheesemakers; give us of your abundance.” If they had not been doing this too often, the door would open and something satisfying would be distributed among them, dates, oaten cakes, sometimes even a copper coin for each.

It was to this splendid door that Adam ben Asher escorted Basil on the morning of their arrival in the Holy City. A current of air from the Cheesemakers’ Valley came up blisteringly hot on their backs as they waited to be admitted. Adam did not seem to mind the discomfort. He turned so he could feast his eyes on the blazing white marble of the Temple at the far end of the bridge across the valley, being careful not to permit the Castle of Antonia to obtrude itself on his vision. This solid pile at the northwest corner had been built by the hated Herod and was now the headquarters of the Roman governor; and so no Jewish eye rested voluntarily on its high stone battlements.

They were escorted into a cool room off the entrance hall and in a few minutes they were greeted by Aaron. Remembering what Adam had told him about the son of the house, Basil was not surprised to find Aaron a middle-aged man of spare build with a face as arid as the desert lands beyond the Jordan and a quick darting eye that passed over each of them in turn with no indication of welcome or pleasure.

“You are back,” said Aaron to Adam. “Has it been a successful journey?”

“Was I not in charge? Is it not certain, then, that the camels have brought wealth on their backs?”

“Perhaps,” said Aaron dryly. “That will be seen.” He glanced coldly at Basil. “Who is this?”

“This is the artist selected by Luke the Physician in Antioch. On instructions from your father.”

Aaron had been holding both of his hands behind his back and at this point he made a loud snapping sound with his fingers. A servant had accompanied him into the room, carrying his head bent over so far that it was impossible to see much of his face. The click of his master’s fingers conveyed some special intelligence to this attendant, for he turned immediately and left the room, the arch of his back and neck lending him a close resemblance to a condor.

“Ebenezer will tell my father you are here,” declared Aaron. “If he
is in one of his more lucid moments, he will probably see you at once.” He studied Basil with an eye as cold as outer space and then said to Adam, “He is very young. Were his qualifications weighed carefully before he was selected?”

“I was so told by Luke.” Adam’s voice carried a bristling note. “Is it not claimed that one Jesus disputed with learned doctors at the age of twelve?”

“That has no bearing,” declared the other sharply. He motioned toward a room opening off the one where they were standing and then addressed Basil. “You will find water there to remove the stains of travel. There will be wine brought in. You,” to Adam, “will have other matters to attend to elsewhere, no doubt.”

“When my master dies, this ungrateful son of a good father will have no further use for my services,” muttered Adam when Aaron had left.

Alone in the inner room, Basil looked about him with speculative eyes, mentally comparing the house of Joseph of Arimathea with the palace on the Antioch Colonnade. It was furnished with a beauty he found somewhat strange, although he realized that the hangings had a fineness of color and texture that gave him a sense of voluptuous pleasure and that the rugs were the best product of the weavers who wrought magic with skilled fingers. It seemed to him that an air of mystery was fostered purposely, whereas the house of Ignatius had been kept wide open, a little noisy by contrast, with the sunlight free to invade every nook and corner. There were other differences. The ornamentation in Antioch had been pure and with a certain feeling for the ascetic; here it approached the point of overelaboration.