The Silver Chalice Read Online Free

shoulder and reveal its whiteness and slender purity of line, and say he must not worry, that she would not improve but was reconciled to her ill fortune. The broad and very brown face of the merchant would lose all of its content. He would sigh heavily and seat himself on the nearest couch, from which he would watch her with solicitude.
    Basil became fond of his new mother also. He would fetch and carry for her and never failed to inquire about her well-being. Sometimes she would reward him with a smile of appreciation and even, on a few rare occasions, with a murmured admission that because of his kindness she felt a trifle better.
    When the boy had lived in the white palace a matter of two years, he found himself so accustomed to his new life that the details of his earlier existence seldom came back to mind. Even the face of his real father was a blurred memory. He stopped asking questions about Theron.
    He spent more of his time in the
aliyyah
above the entrance than anywhere else. Here he could look up and down the Great Colonnade and see the life of the city at high tide: the Roman official strutting pompously with toga over his left shoulder or clattering by in a chariot; the man from the desert on a handsome white Syrian camel with scarlet fringed harness from which a magic amulet dangled; the Jew who wore on his forehead a roll of parchment that was called a phylactery and was inscribed with holy texts; the Phoenician sailor, back fromthe Pillars of Hercules, with a brass ring in his nose and his hair curled in oily tufts.
    Each day he would see rich neighbors (but none of them as wealthy as Ignatius) starting out for rides through the city. First a flag would be hoisted over the entrance and then there would be a loud beating of gongs and drums. The gate would swing back and two mighty horses would prance out, the reins held invariably in the proud black fists of a smiling driver. Behind, like an anticlimax, would come a tiny carriage with a fancy white canopy under which the members of the family would be closely packed.
    Sometimes he witnessed a spectacle that caused the blood to course turbulently in his veins, a company of Roman soldiers on the march. He could always tell whether they were on parade or leaving for service in the frontier wars; in the latter event, they had “put on the saggum,” a rough gray garment that was worn over the steel-plated habergeon and served also as a blanket at night. When this happened, he would watch the rhythmic marchers in their spiked Umbrian helmets and his eyes would take fire and his nostrils would flex themselves. He had no desire to be a soldier, but the color of war affected him like a fever.
    One incident that occurred on the street below his post of observation always remained vividly in his memory. A vendor of sweetmeats had approached from the direction of the Omphalos, carrying his tray on his head. There was something about the man, an openness of eye and an almost benign cast of feature, that seemed out of keeping with the lowliness of his occupation. Basil, sensing this contrast, watched him closely, wondering about him and speculating as to his nationality. When the vendor reached a point immediately beneath, he was stopped by a customer. Looking down directly on them, the boy witnessed something that caused him to catch his breath. The hand of the vendor, raised ostensibly to make a selection from the tray, stopped instead to draw a piece of paper from a space immediately under the sweetmeats. The paper passed from one to the other and vanished into the sleeve of the purchaser so quickly that no pair of eyes save that of the watcher above could have become aware of what was happening. A small copper coin was tendered and accepted and the pair separated, to be lost at once in the thick traffic of the street.
    Basil said to himself, “I am sure they are Christians.”
    He was recalling a visit he had paid with his real father when a boyof perhaps six years to