The Silver Chalice by Thomas B. Costain Page B

day. For a week thereafter Adam ben Asher traded and bought and sold while Basil waited. After the talk to which he had listened between the two older men, Basil did not look forward to the long journey over the hot trails to Jerusalem in the company of Adam, who thought so ill of him.
    “I hope you have a stout heart under those skinny ribs of yours,” said Adam as they sat together over what they thought would be their last evening meal in Aleppo. “We will be two weeks at least on the road, and the heat will be enough to fry a lizard on a rock.” He swallowed his last bite of food and wiped his lips with a quick flick of one hand. “We start at dawn.”
    But they did not start at dawn. Basil developed a fever during the night, the result, perhaps, of the state of anxiety in which he had existed, but more still of the undernourishment and overwork of two long years. For three days he tossed about in a stupor, his eyes closed, his brow hot and dry. Adam ben Asher, grumbling loudly about the delay and the absence of Luke in this emergency, dosed the sick youth with every medicine he could find. On the morning of the fourth day he detected a trace of moisture on the patient’s forehead.
    “Luke could not have done better,” said the caravan captain to himself with a sense of pride in his success. “Was it the black hellebore or the pods of the carob I bought from that old Armenian? Whichever it was, he’s going to live.” Rubbing a hand over his unshaved jaw, he studied the patient with an eye which still lacked friendliness. “If he had stayed sick another day, I would have left him and gone on my way. It would have been necessary for Luke to find another artist, and he might have the good sense this time to pick a man of good round years, a fellow with a fat belly, perhaps, and a bald head. I would be easier in my mind if I were taking into the house of Joseph a chisel-wielder with a rheumy eye and a sourness of breath instead of this slim young sprig.”
    The day following, when the freshness of dawn was in the air, Basil was lifted to the back of a camel that had been fitted out with a
musattah
, a litter consisting of a small square tent and a comfortable back against which he could lean. He was still weak and ill but grimly determined not to cause the fuming caravan captain any further delay.
    Adam watched an assistant tic the pale young artist to the rear cushions with tasseled cords of twisted goat’s hair and grunted an order. The man gave the reins a jerk and said
“Khikh!”
in a sharp tone. The camel groaned, thrust its head forward, and rose slowly to its knees. Basil felt himself being tilted forward as the animal elevated its rear quarters without moving either foreleg. Lacking the strength to move his arms, he was certain that he was going to slip out of the front of the
musattah
. In the nick of time, however, one of the forelegs was raised until the foot touched the ground and the whole of the front quarter began to rise in turn. After what seemed a long time, and to the accompaniment of much groaning and grumbling, the front established equilibrium and the sick rider sighed with relief.
    “Khikh!”
cried the overseer, the leader of the train, who had come up to watch. He was a stout fellow with a bronze face and he looked around at Adam as the camel started off at a slow swinging gait. “Walk?” he asked.
    “Walk,” affirmed Adam. “For the next two days. If we try for more than twenty-five miles at first we will have an artist to bury. I would not object myself, but the old man in Jerusalem would not be pleased.”
    “There are times,” said the overseer, “when we cannot consider our own pleasure and have to think about the old man in Jerusalem.”
    “He has some use for this young bag of bones,” explained Adam.
    The long train had swept out from the encampment, which lay under the walls of the city, and was moving slowly down the Jerusalem Road when Adam brought his camel up