Thomas B. Costain - The Silver Chalice

Then he thought of the stifling heat in which his parents and his two brothers would be existing, and all sense of well-being left him. He was particularly concerned about his father. “I am sure he is sad,” he thought, “because I am no longer there.”

The slaves were removing the food and he became aware that one of them, a girl a year or two older than himself, was very attractive. She was watching him covertly, her eyes always turning in his direction as she moved about her tasks. Once, when Castor’s back was turned, she gave him a smile. He allowed his mouth to twitch in response. Encouraged by this, she sauntered close enough to the parapet to address him in a whisper.

“Castor would whip me if he caught me speaking to you. But I don’t care. He has whipped me many times and I scratch him and kick him in the shins. He is a beast.”

A few minutes later, having accomplished so much without being detected, the girl sauntered close to him again, moving with a sinuous swing of her slender hips. She whispered with a catch of breath that came close to being a giggle, “I think you are a pretty boy.”

This time she did not escape detection. The lady Persis raised herself from her couch and said in a sharp voice: “Attend to your duties, girl! Do you want me to report you to Castor for insolence?”

The girl disappeared in a great hurry at that, and the lady of the house called Basil to her and talked to him about the attitude he must adopt toward the slaves. He must never be familiar with them, particularly with the girls, of whom there were nearly a dozen. “Never lay a hand on any of them,” she admonished. “It always leads to trouble. As for this one, she is an impudent slut. She was traded to us in redemption of a debt, and I am certain we made a mistake in taking her. Never speak to her or she will presume on it.”

During the next few days, which were so exciting and full of surprises that he had no time to be homesick, Basil was always aware of this forward member of the household staff. Her name was Helena, and her sloe black eyes gave her an illusion of beauty. She never spoke to him, but he knew that she continued as aware of his presence as he was of hers and that only the fear of Castor’s long black whip kept her from attempting more familiarities.

Then he missed her. For several weeks she was not in evidence; and finally he was told by Cassandra, a coal-black slave who did nothing but tend to the clothes of the lady Persis, that the girl had been sent to the “housing,” which meant, he knew, that she was working in the warehouses. Sometimes slaves were sent to the housing and came back later in a subdued mood, in which case it was said they had been tamed. When Helena returned a full month later, Basil got up his courage to ask Castor about it. Had she—had she been tamed?

“Tamed?” Castor snarled with his whole face, his oily black whiskers curling upward under his nose. “Not that one. Nothing can tame her.”

Basil’s room was on the floor beneath the rooftop, a lofty and cool apartment with a sunken bath in one corner and with a couch that was beautiful to see but deceptively hard beneath its fancy coverings. The next night the heat was so great that sleep was impossible and, as he tossed about, he imagined that he had heard a voice call his name from the balcony of the floor below. The call was repeated, “Basil!” in a tone little above a whisper. He was sure it was the girl Helena and that she had climbed up from the slave quarters by means of the garden latticework.

Remembering the warning he had received from his mother, he did not respond at once. Then it occurred to him that she might be in need of help. He sat up on the side of his bed and wondered what to do. “Are you going to be a coward?” he asked himself. Finally he decided he must risk the consequences and, getting to his feet, tiptoed to the door opening on the inner corridor. As he did so, he fancied he detected a sound of rustling and creaking, as though she were making her way back by the same means she had employed in reaching the balcony. He whispered her name but received no response. The silence of the night remained unbroken after that, but the boy could not sleep. He was dissatisfied with himself. “I must be lacking in courage,” he thought a dozen times.

The next day he heard that she had run away. When he asked Castor about it, the major-domo scowled and said: “I wish I knew where she has gone, the little slut! How I would like to get my hands on her. I would raise welts on that white back of which she is so proud!” He took out the whip that was always with him like a truncheon of office and cracked it viciously. “This much I know, she’s not serving one master now. She will serve a different one every night of her life. That is what she has gone to, the lazy limb of wickedness!”

Basil soon fell into the new ways and found that living in luxury and being waited on hand and foot were quite pleasant. He became much attached to his new father. Quite often, when Ignatius was talking to other men about matters of trade in the high circular room opening on the garden that he reserved for such matters, his voice would be rough and domineering. None of this showed in his manner to his wife and new son, however. He would walk to the couch where Persis reclined (she never seemed to have enough energy to sit up) and stroke her hair while he asked, “Does my pretty little gray kitten feel any better today?” Unfortunately his pretty gray kitten never felt any better. Her usual answer, in fact, was that she felt worse. She would reach out a hand to touch the sleeve of his tunic, a gesture that would bare her arm to the 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 from the 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.