The Silver Chalice. Thomas B. Costain
that of men like me, to bring this about.”
Theron was listening and watching with amazement. Could this be Ignatius talking, the man most feared in the markets and countinghouses and along the waterfront where the warehouses were so thick they cut off all view of the shipping at the wharves?
“When I die,” went on the merchant, with a hint of pride in his manner, “there will be a great fortune to pass on. There will be no need for those who follow me to go on accumulating money and possessions. I want in my place then a man who will see things as I see them now and who will know how to use my wealth to restore some of the real glory of Greece.”
Theron felt himself in the position of a defending captain who sees the high walls around him being battered down.
“But,” he demurred, in an effort to find some ground for a last stand, “you know nothing about my third son. Why are you sure he is the one you want?”
“I never take a step until I know exactly what I want.” Ignatius spoke confidently. “I saw your son once only, but I know much about him. I have seen to it that inquiries were made.
“I walked one day through the Ward of the Trades, and it was then I saw him,” he went on. “There were a dozen boys together, hopping about and scuffling and fighting—and one who sat against a wall and whittled with a knife at a piece of wood. I stopped and watched him. He was different from the others. I could see that he had a fine and wide brow. The others tried to get him into their games, but he paid no attention. Then one of them went over and snatched away the piece of wood. The boy was on his feet in a trice and fighting to get it back. He fought well. I said to myself, ‘He stands apart and asks only to be left alone, but he’s willing to fight for what is important to him.’ And then I said to myself, ‘This is the boy I want as my son.’ I felt very happy because I had been searching for a long time. I asked one of the other boys who he was and the boy said, ‘His father is Theron, who can tilt a bottle with the best and who sells lampblack and calls it ink.’ And so, Theron, my old friend, I have come to you today to talk of terms.”
The seller of pens heaved a deep sigh. “You have opened your heart to me, Ignatius. Can I do less?” He spread out his hands in a gesture of reluctant surrender. “My fine little Ambrose is the light of my life. I love him so much that my house will be desolate without him. But what kind of a father is one who lets his own happiness stand in the way of his son’s? It shall be as you desire.” Then he turned with the fierce willingness to barter that the hot sun seems to foster. “There must be five witnesses.”
“Yes.” The oil merchant realized the distress in the mind of the other man and spoke in a kindly tone. “It will be made legal and tight. Three times you will offer to sell me your son in the presence of the five witnesses and each time one of them will strike the brass scales with the ingot of lead. It shall all be done as the laws prescribe so that your son—no, it must now be said my son—will live with me and Persis, my wife, in full happiness and in the end be possessed of all my wealth.”
Theron found it hard to speak because of the lump in his throat. “I place a high value on my son. I shall drive a hard bargain with you, Ignatius.”
Accordingly five witnesses were summoned to hear Theron, clothed for the first time in his life in a spotless white toga (an extravagance at which his thrifty wife had protested bitterly), announce his willingness to sell his son Ambrose to Ignatius, son of Basil. Three times the scales were struck by one of the five, Hiram of Silenus. Hiram was an owner of small olive groves and made his profit by sailing in the wake of the lordly Ignatius; and he considered it the honor of a lifetime to officiate in this capacity. At the finish the new father said: “I shall name my son after my own father, Basil. It is the greatest honor I may pay him, for my father was a great man.”
“Happy is the son,” said Theron sadly, “who can look up with pride to his father. And happy is the father who can inspire such pride.”
As he never did anything by halves, Ignatius not only handed over the full amount he was to pay, but he announced to the seller of pens that he had arranged for him and his family to move south to the city of Sidon, where much more remunerative employment had been found for him. Theron agreed at once that this was sensible. The boy, cut off from everything to do with his former life, would more easily fit himself into the new environment. “It will be better if you hear no word from me at all,” he said to the new father. “The sooner the memory of me dims in the boy’s mind, the easier it will be for all of us. Be good to him, old friend.”
The one flaw in the ceremony had been the absence of the boy. It had been arranged that he was to be given over at once into the custody of his new parents. He had been thoroughly scrubbed and arrayed in the white tunic provided for him, and a handsome leather belt had been buckled about his waist. For a brief moment the boy had known a feeling of pride in the figure he cut; but when Theron was ready to leave, looking every bit as doleful as he felt, there was no trace to be found of the central figure in the transaction. The father went alone, therefore, to the frightening magnificence of the white palace beyond the four tiers of columns on the Great Colonnade while the boy’s mother and his two older brothers (all furiously determined that nothing should prevent the paying over of the handsome sum that was to seal the bargain) went out to search. He was not found until late in the afternoon, crouched behind a pile of faggots in a river warehouse, his face black with soot and streaked with tears. He had not been idle while he remained in concealment. A lump of clay had been modeled into a caricature of the man into whose house he was to go, an unmistakable likeness, although the nose had been given a predatory hook and the ears had been enlarged to suggest extreme greed.
Theron arrived home on legs that were unsteady and with a wine stain on his white toga. His tongue was thick as he muttered: “I sell honest ink. Never have I given a customer plain lampblack. And I am never drunk.”
“The wine drips from your ears now!” declared his wife.
Theron, at any rate, was sober enough to destroy the small bust before taking the boy to his new home.
2
Basil, to give him the name by which he was to be called for the rest of his life, had never been inside one of the stone palaces clustering in the neighborhood where the statue of Apollo perched atop the Omphalos and where stood also the gold-sheeted dome of the Temple of Jupiter. His eyes were wide with curiosity when he was led in under the elaborately carved aliyyah protruding out over the main entrance. The floor under his feet in the hall was of yellow stone, and the glowing colors of the tapestries on the walls drew an exclamation of wonder and delight from him. The house, which was three stories in height, was built around a luxuriously green garden, but the latticed windows had all been closed against the heat. There were no signs of life in the garden save the splash of water in a fountain and the occasional note of a bird. “This must be Paradise,” thought the boy.
Theron bade his son farewell with an air of assumed dignity. “You are going to live in great splendor,” he said. “But if you remember me, little son, let it not be with a sense of shame.”
He left the boy then in the care of a fiercely handsome major-domo with bristling black whiskers. His name was Castor and there was a shade of condescension in his manner because he knew Basil had been born and raised in the Ward of the Trades. “Come, boy,” he said. “I am to take you at once to the master. The master is a very rich man and one of great power. You will find things strange here.”
Humility was a quality that was soon beaten out of boys who lived on the other side of the Colonnade. Basil scowled at the major-domo. “The only things strange here,” he said, “is that a eunuch dares to speak thus to the son of the house.”
Castor found this retort to his liking. He grinned at Basil and said, “We will get along together, you and I.”
The cool halls of the house were filled with activity as the major-domo led the way up the wide stairs to the rooftop. Servants in fine robes were carrying up dishes of food and flagons of wine and bowls filled with pieces of ice, whispering as they passed each other; whispering