And what more convenient occupation for a spy than tavern keeper? Travelers are drawn to a tavern. All manner of people went in and out all day long. Ezra was particularly well placed to pass on information without drawing attention to himself. The conclusion was inescapable. Ezra was the Tetrarch’s spy in Capernaum.
But what to do about it? When Noah came back, Ezra would send another message to Tiberias. She would have to warn Noah, and then he would have to leave and would be without a safe place in the world to hide his head.
Better, far better, to silence Ezra. The Tetrarch was hated in Capernaum—all she would have to do was to mention her suspicions to any one of perhaps fifty people, and Ezra would disappear forever.
Then Deborah would have his life on her conscience.
But perhaps she could leave the decision to Ezra. Yes, that would even be safer. Better by far to have the Tetrarch’s spy in her power than to have him dead, in which case the men in Tiberias would only recruit another spy.
Deborah went downstairs and found Hannah.
“Go to Ezra’s tavern,” she told her. “Buy a dozen jugs of beer and tell him they are too heavy for you to carry. Tell him I will expect him to deliver them personally within the hour.”
A quarter of an hour later, Hannah was back. “He will bring the beer as soon as he can get away, Mistress.”
So there was nothing left to do except to wait.
When he came, Ezra brought the beer to the kitchen door in a handcart. It was put away in a small cellar, and then he was told that the mistress was in the garden.
When he presented himself to be paid, Deborah was standing beside her grape arbor. She took some coins out of her purse and scattered them at his feet.
“You must pick them out of the dirt, Ezra. I am sure you have stooped even lower to collect your money.”
A tradesman becomes inured to the insults of the wealthy, so, hardly even allowing himself a reproachful glance, Ezra went down on his knees and began gathering up the coins. He had almost the last one before Deborah spoke again.
“Tell me, Ezra. How did the man from Tiberias know to come to Capernaum?”
“Lady, I know nothing about any—”
“Don’t lie to me, please,” she interrupted sweetly. Under other circumstances her smile would have warmed a heart colder than Ezra’s, but he understood at once that he was in mortal danger. “I know that you passed a message. For the moment I only wish to know how.”
“Lady, how can you—”
“I will tell you again, and for the last time, do not lie to me. You are aware of what will happen to you if it becomes known that you have been spying on us for your friends in the Tetrarch’s palace. You will disappear into the sea, your corpse wrapped in a fishing net, weighted with stones. Now, if you wish to live, answer my question.”
One could see the struggle in Ezra’s face. How could she possibly know? She knew. It didn’t matter how. Which was more dangerous, to deny everything or to tell the truth? She was only a woman. Could he somehow bluff or frighten her? No. But would anyone believe her? Yes.
Watching his indecision, Deborah saw that she had guessed right. She felt a cold fury rising within her. This man had wanted to sell Noah to his enemies. For money. He had bartered with Noah’s life as if the man she loved were no more than a basket of fish.
Yes. She had it within her to kill Ezra. If he did not confess, this would be his last Sabbath.
And perhaps Ezra saw this in her face.
“There is a boatman,” he said at last. “His name is Ruben. He makes the journey from Tiberias every day and always takes a meal at my place. Sometimes he brings me orders—I don’t know from whom—and I tell him whatever I see. In Tiberias they had wanted to know about the preacher. And now they want to know about this fellow Noah.”
He was still on his knees, and now he really looked like a beggar. The fear in his eyes made them shine like wet stones.
“Lady, I am only Ezra, the fisherman turned tavern keeper. These people could crush us all with a word. What was I to do?”
“I can’t answer that question, but I can tell you what you will do now.”
Deborah leaned forward and put her hand on Ezra’s shoulder. It was a gesture not of love or forgiveness or even pity, but of authority. She was like a queen accepting the submission of a subject.
“You will make no more reports about Noah. You will never again whisper his name in this boatman’s ear. He can come and go, and you will be blind to it. More than that, you will tell me everything these men in Tiberias tell you. Everything. Do you understand me?”
“But, Lady, what if they learn that I have betrayed them? They will surely put me to death.”
“They may never learn, Ezra, but that is in the future. If you do not do as I bid, you will have no reason to fear them because you will already be dead.
“Now—will you obey me?”
“Yes, Lady.”
“Then we understand each other. If any harm comes to Noah, the very next day the fishes will be feeding on your eyes.”
She dismissed him without a word, with the merest wave of her hand. And when he was gone she went over to the bench beneath the grape arbor and sat down. Suddenly she bent over, put her face in her hands, and wept. It was like a spasm of pain and disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. The grief she felt after was dry eyed and sullen. It was for the loss of something within herself, and she knew not what.
15
The village of Gischala in northern Galilee was famous for its olives. Matthias knew it well, since his native village of Meroth was only a few miles to the south. His mother had been born in Gischala, so he had family there.
He used to think that everything good in him had come from Gischala, for he had loved his mother. He was not a man to cultivate sentiment, but even now, ten years after her death, tears came to his eyes whenever he thought of her.
Hers was the fate of the gentle and the meek. She had been given in marriage to a distant cousin, a man named Abiud, ten years her senior who had already worn out a wife. Matthias could still remember the way, when his father had had too much beer, he would lament the death of his first wife, praising her beauty and virtue. In fact, he had led her a wretched life, so that, if family lore was to be believed, she had been glad to die.
As he grew older, the brutality of his father’s nature had intensified, possibly because it met no resistance. Abiud’s children—Matthias had two elder half brothers and a sister—were terrified of him, as was his wife.
Matthias could not remember a time when his mother’s face had not carried bruises. Twice Abiud beat her into unconsciousness.
Then, quite unexpectedly one Sabbath, she died. No one was surprised except Matthias, who was fourteen at the time.
She couldn’t get out of bed that morning. His father became angry and began shouting threats and, finally, she got up. She went into the kitchen and sat down. A few minutes later blood began to pour out of her mouth. She collapsed to the floor and died.
Matthias knew, of course, that his father had killed her. He had beaten her once too often, or too savagely, and had given her a mortal injury.
He knew, but there was little a boy of fourteen could do. He could not match his father, so he waited.
After that Matthias never thought of him as “my father,” only as “Abiud.” He was a stranger and an enemy.
He waited for two years. Then one day he caught Abiud alone, sowing wheat in a field about a mile from the village. Matthias had provided himself with the wooden handle of a scythe, and he took his time beating this man to death. He broke a knee and both arms, then he went to work on the face. Finally he broke Abiud’s neck, so that the head collapsed to one side. He never forgot the way his father first laughed and then, after the first blow struck, howled like a cur—and then, toward the end, how he begged for his life.
When Abiud was dead, his son ran away. It was a terrible sin to murder one’s father, and the villagers
would have stoned him to death. He did not stop running until he reached Sepphoris, where he joined the Tetrarch’s army.
The army taught him that brutality was the price of order. The Tetrarch’s rule depended on his soldiers. If there was a riot and the soldiers came out of their barracks and killed two hundred people, the next day people stayed in their houses and there was peace. Soldiers were men set apart. Necessary, but hated by everyone. The only loyalty was to your comrades and to the Tetrarch, and to the Tetrarch only so long as the soldiers were paid.
These were the conditions of life, Matthias decided. Where else could he go? What other kennel would hold him?
The first year was the worst. Recruits were drilled until they lost the power to think. One became a soldier by acquiring a soldier’s reflexes. Thinking had no part in it. A soldier was better off without memories or feelings or thoughts. This was the hardest lesson to learn, and Matthias never really mastered it. What he learned instead was that you cannot escape the things you have done. They haunt your dreams.
Even wine, which he had hardly tasted before he joined the army, could not banish his dreams forever. You could drink until it was almost as if you were dead, until even your dreams were stilled, but you would always wake again. And it was not possible to be drunk every night.
A Greek once told him that some professions do not allow a man to be virtuous. He said some wise man among his people had written this long ago. It was true.
A potter makes jars, a farmer harvests wheat, a soldier kills. That is his work. He is given a sword when he finishes his training, and the sword defines him.
Some men could not bear the burden. They ran away. They tried to go back to their villages, or to melt into the city crowds, but armies everywhere made a point of hunting down deserters, so they were almost always caught. And deserters were crucified.
But sometimes they were granted a quicker death.
About a month after Matthias won his sword, a batch of six deserters was scheduled for death. Each one, with his hands bound behind his back, had a noose put round his neck, and the other end of the rope was tied to the back of a wagon. When the wagon started its journey to the execution grounds they had to trot to keep up. One prisoner fell down—perhaps deliberately, hoping that the rope would strangle him as he was dragged along—but they merely stopped the wagon, flogged him to his feet, and set off again. It was a good three miles to the abandoned stone quarry called “the place of crosses.”
The guard had to quick march to keep up with the wagon, but at least their hands were free. The guard consisted of twenty men. A few were still green. Matthias was one of these.
When they reached the execution ground—a barren place—the squad commander chose four of the prisoners, apparently at random, cut the leather straps that bound their hands, and told them to go sit down. The remaining two were stripped of their tunics.
“Now these boys, who wanted to run home to their mothers, will be allowed to provide a few of our new men with a chance to wet their swords,” the squad commander announced. “And don’t feel sorry for them, because you’ll be doing them a favor. They get to die quick, instead of after four or five days on the cross.”
He grabbed one of the condemned men by the arm and pushed him forward.
“You there,” he shouted, pointing with his free hand at the man standing beside Matthias, “Ebed, isn’t it? Just step up here and kill him. You know how it’s done.”
Ebed was only fifteen, and he looked more frightened than his victim as he drew his sword.
“Go on now. Finish him.” The squad commander pointed to a spot just under the prisoner’s breastbone. “Right there.”
After a tentative stab, which did little more than break the skin, Ebed seemed to lose heart entirely.
“Come on, don’t be such a coward! Kill him, or I’ll have you up on a cross before you’re an hour older. Kill him!”
After a second attempt the prisoner was on his knees and bleeding heavily, but still alive. Finally the squad commander jerked him back up on his feet. Then he took Ebed’s hand in his and guided his sword point to the first wound.
“Now push! That’s all you have to do, just push.”
It seemed to take forever, with the prisoner screaming in pain and fear, but at last he went down on one knee and then simply toppled over. He lay there, panting for breath, and then he was still.
“Ebed, I’ll make sure you get twenty strokes for this. What a dog’s dinner! Matthias, see if you can do better.”
Matthias had already decided that he wouldn’t hesitate. To hesitate is to let fear seize you, so he didn’t even wait for the next prisoner to be brought forward. He covered the distance in a few long strides, drawing his sword as he went. The prisoner simply watched him, as if he hardly knew what was happening.
In the last instant the prisoner snapped awake and tried to pull himself back, but Matthias’s downward slash caught him in the throat. There was a great spray of blood. The man stared at Matthias in what seemed like disbelief, and then collapsed.
The squad commander had been standing a foot or so too close. He wiped some of the blood from his face and then looked at it on his hand. Then he nodded.
“A little messy,” he said calmly, “but I’m not complaining. At least someone here knows how to kill.”
They spent what was left of the morning watching the progress of the executions. As part of his punishment, Ebed was forced to help with the nailing. When all four men were up on their crosses, a guard was left to keep watch, and the rest of the soldiers were marched back to barracks. Ebed wept the whole way.
A week later, in the middle of the night, Ebed went into the toilet and slashed his wrists.
Brutality was the price of order. And of life. Those were the alternatives—kill or die.
And now Matthias found himself back at Gischala.
“Why couldn’t the cursed man live in some other place?” he asked under his breath. He was thinking not of his mother but of topography.
Gischala was on a hill. There were only four trails to the summit, but from any direction it was not a steep climb, so the trails were more a convenience than a necessity. This meant that a man in fear of his life could flee in any direction.
So they would have to enter the village at night. They would have to surprise Reuel bar Omri in his bed—him and his two brothers—and either kill them or take them away before the villagers had time to organize any resistance.
Matthias sat on a rock at the edge of a grove of trees, contemplating the problem. The village was no more than two miles distant. He had ten men with him, and twelve horses, but the horses would never manage the trails up to Gischala at night. He would have to leave the horses, and two men to guard them. The rest of the men would enter the village from the south and east, since those trails offered the easiest ascent, and they would converge on the southern edge of the village. The climb would probably take about half an hour. They would carry oil lamps to light their ascent, an unavoidable risk. With any luck they would be on their way back down before more than a dozen people even knew they had been there.
It was late afternoon, so they would have a few more hours to rest before it was dark.
There were perhaps four hundred people in the village. Matthias knew many of their names and where they lived. He did not know Reuel bar Omri, but when he was a boy, visiting his cousins, there had been a man named Omri living four houses away from his uncle Jethro. It was a place to start.
He spoke to his men, drawing a map of the village in the dirt. All were dressed in peasant clothing, so if they were caught or killed people would assume they were merely bandits. They watched him with hungry, attentive faces. They were looking forward to the raid.
Keeping them focused on the task was always the most difficult part. They cared nothing about Reuel bar Omri and, indeed, for that he did not need them. They thought only of plunder and rape, and wetting their swords with blood. They were with him in case th
e alarm was raised and they had to fight their way out.
They were the accursed of God.
So also was he. He led these men and he was one of them. Matthias bar Abiud, son of a brute and a brute himself—murderer, kidnapper, torturer, drunk. The foul servant of a foul master. Matthias bar Abiud, who had killed his own father in the coldest of blood, had no illusions about himself.
He knew he would kill in Gischala tonight, and if he brought Reuel out alive it would only be to deliver him up to torture and death. He would do these things because it was the Lord Caleb’s will, and the Lord Caleb was a devil.
Matthias, he now recognized, had begun his journey into darkness the moment he took that scythe handle out of the toolshed, and it had brought him here, to his mother’s village, where he was about to do things that would have made her heart wither.
And there was no escape. God had cursed him for his sins.
It was always worst in the hours of waiting, before the thing was done, while it loomed in his imagination like a ghost. Matthias knew he would be all right again once they started up the trail. Doing evil was always easier than imagining it—or remembering it.
Reuel bar Omri was the last. Matthias and his men had raided five other villages within Galilee and had taken away eight prisoners. He had saved Gischala to the end because it was his mother’s village and would for that reason be the worst.
And when it was over he would deliver Reuel to the Tetrarch’s dungeon and then go out and find himself a whore and jar of wine and forget all this. He would drink until he could sleep with no dreams, until even waking would seem a dream. He would stay that way until the Lord Caleb had more work for him to do.
His consolations in life were whores and wine and the hope that death was extinction.
Matthias sat watching the sun set. There was a line of hills to the west, so the darkness came earlier in the valley. That darkness would cover their movements as they approached the trails up to Gischala, but they would need their lamps on the trails, and the light from them would alert anyone in the village who happened to look down.
The Ironsmith Page 15