The Ironsmith

by Nicholas Guild

  He had probably been gone for hours.

  * * *

  But in truth Noah was still in Nazareth. It had occurred to him that his nameless adversary might use the night to come into the village, so as soon as it was full dark he had brought his grandfather back to Joseph’s house and had himself slept in the carpenters’ workshop. Then, an hour before dawn, when he judged it safe, he had brought Grandfather back to his own house to make a show of eating his breakfast alone, and then Noah returned to the workshop.

  It was about two hours past dawn when Jacob showed up to report.

  “He’s gone.” Jacob smiled broadly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “He’s half an hour down the road to Tiberias.”

  “He didn’t see you?”

  Jacob shook his head. “No. I was careful. And he was in too much of a hurry to look back.”

  “Then I had best leave before other possibilities occur to him. And, Jacob…” He took hold of his cousin’s arm. “In case he comes back, keep a watch on Grandfather. These people are capable of anything.”

  Half an hour later, Noah was in the village of Japha, south of Nazareth. As he was a stranger there, people noticed him, and noticed that, after passing through Japha, he continued south. But as soon as he judged himself out of sight, he started east, hoping to reach the city of Philoteria, at the southern end of the Sea of Kinneret, before nightfall.

  * * *

  Not long after reaching the main road, Matthias encountered a man riding a horse. He reached up and grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him off the horse and dumping him on the ground. When the man objected, Matthias showed him the point of his sword, which ended the discussion.

  He drove the animal without mercy for two hours, until he realized that he was not going to catch up with Noah because Noah was not on that road. He then cursed himself for having been tricked twice in one day by the same man.

  But his respect for Noah, already high, increased.

  He considered backtracking to Nazareth, but decided against it. Noah, he reasoned, was not fool enough to let anyone know what route he intended to follow, so terrorizing his relations would yield nothing. The man could be anywhere.

  But Matthias consoled himself with the thought that his quarry’s journey, no matter how full of turnings, would end in Capernaum. That was where Noah would expect to find his cousin, the prophet.

  And death would be waiting for him.

  * * *

  Noah spent the night in Philoteria. He had hardly slept the night before, so he went to bed early, after a heavy dinner, during which his host, a tavern keeper who understood his trade, kept refilling his wine cup. So he slept late the next morning and awoke with a headache.

  The headache yielded to breakfast and several cups of cold water, and thus Noah was left free to consider his situation.

  He could not be sure that the man in the grape arbor was not from the Lord Eleazar, who might be keeping a friendly eye on him, as he had on the way back from Damascus. Noah had not had time to apprise him of his recent discoveries. Perhaps he was growing impatient.

  It was also possible that Caleb was having him watched. Had he been watching in Tiberias? Did he know that Noah had been inquiring about Judah? Jacob had described the occupant of the grape arbor as a big man. Could it be the same big man who had attacked Noah on the road, sent now to finish the job?

  If this line of conjecture was anywhere near the truth, then Caleb would know—or perhaps only fear—that Noah was intending to warn Joshua. Caleb would certainly regard another murder on his conscience as a small price to pay for protecting his spy.

  Noah would have to wait until Capernaum to find out, and once there, he might not live long enough to rejoice in the accuracy of his assessment.

  Nevertheless, an hour after breakfast he went down to the docks with the intention of finding a ride north. He discovered a freight boat that was just preparing to depart, and a meager exchange of silver bought him a seat on a crate of pottery destined for the bazaars of Hippos.

  It suited Noah’s purpose to travel up the eastern shore, skirting along the edge of Philip’s domain and thus beyond Caleb’s easy reach. He would get off at Bethsaida and thus approach Capernaum on foot from the north.

  But before then, he had two days on the water. He enjoyed the sun in his face, and it was amusing to listen to the captain swearing at his men in Greek. He would have perhaps an hour in each port while cargo was unloaded, which would give him time to buy a meal. He reminded himself that at the next stop he should buy wine for the crew.

  * * *

  Matthias sold his stolen horse in Tiberias, since arriving in Capernaum with a horse would only make him more conspicuous. He spent an hour at the harbor questioning the boat crews, but he really didn’t expect to learn anything of Noah and he didn’t. Noah was far too clever to come anywhere near Tiberias.

  With the money in his hand, Matthias seriously considered getting drunk. This job was beginning to oppress him. He felt himself overmatched, but more to the point, he could not keep out of his mind the image of Noah standing beside his kinsman’s grave, his head covered with his prayer shawl, reciting the prayers for the dead. It filled him with self-loathing, an emotion he could usually keep at bay while working, when he was able to focus on the operational steps of his task.

  To kill someone, it is first necessary to deprive them of humanity, to make them somehow deserving of death. The worst had been the little whore in Tiberias, whom he had bribed to betray her customer and then had strangled as a precaution. He had liked her, liked her flirtatiousness. She had been reluctant about Judah bar Isaac, but the silver Matthias had spread out on the table before her was perhaps more than she had ever seen in her life. She had yielded to the temptation, but in the end had bought herself nothing except Matthias’s hands around her throat.

  The men had always been easier—particularly men who were simply there, in the way, with no other purpose but to die. How much pity does a farmer have for the wheat beneath his scythe?

  Remorse came after, in the darkness, in one’s dreams. Then their faces haunted him.

  Noah’s face haunted him already. He could not lie to himself this time. There was no escape from the consciousness of what he was preparing to do.

  Except, of course, in wine. If he drank enough he could achieve a certain detachment. Oh yes, I am an evil fellow, and God has turned His back on me, but I cannot care. And sleep became like death, dreamless and serene.

  But even wine was beginning to be not enough. Only a week ago, so he was told by a woman he sometimes slept with, he had begun sobbing and had taken out his sword, swearing he would cut his own head off. She said she believed he would have done it, but he was too drunk, and she took the sword from his hands, grown as strengthless as a child’s.

  Would that be how it ended one day? Would he slay himself, the final act of a man damned by God?

  Matthias pushed these reflections from his mind and poured the money into his purse. He would drink himself into oblivion only after he had killed Noah.

  37

  Noah thoroughly enjoyed himself throughout the voyage. At first the crew thought he was no more than another soft merchant hitching a ride, but then, as the morning began wind-still, one of them asked, as a joke, if Noah might care to take his turn on an oar. When he pulled off his tunic, and they saw the muscles in his arms and chest, they stopped laughing. He was in the oar pits for over an hour, until there was breeze enough to fill the sail. By then the sailors seemed to regard him as one of themselves.

  In the afternoon he made himself useful by rehinging the cargo door, and at night, when they dropped anchor outside Gergesa, they all held high revel with the wine Noah had bought in Hippos. At a certain point in the festivities, everyone went swimming. Afterwards, the captain was so drunk that he couldn’t negotiate the rope ladder and had to be hoisted back aboard like a waterlogged bail of wool.

  When finally they unrolled their sleeping mats on the deck, No
ah was too tired to think or even to dream.

  The next day, shortly after noon, they were in sight of Bethsaida, and for the first time since being on the water Noah remembered the man in the grape arbor.

  Simply to put off making any decisions, he stayed to help the crew unload. Then he said his good-byes and found an inn in the harbor district. Capernaum was only a short walk down the coast, but he did not care to come into the town with only a few hours of daylight remaining. Joshua might not even be there, and he wanted time to find him before nightfall.

  He wondered if, when the ship pulled into the dock at Capernaum, there would be a big man waiting to see who got off of it.

  * * *

  Matthias spent the night at Ezra’s tavern. He knew that Ezra was one of the Lord Caleb’s informers, but he did not make inquiries until after dinner. He sat outside in the failing light, and Ezra came around to ask if he would like something stronger than the weak beer he was drinking.

  “Where is Joshua of Nazareth?” Matthias asked, without preamble.

  “I … I don’t know of any such person,” Ezra stuttered out.

  He was lying, of course—one could see that in his face. So Matthias grabbed him by the testicles and squeezed. Ezra doubled over in pain.

  “I’ll ask you once more, and if I don’t like the answer, I’ll rip these off and toss them out into the street for the dogs to eat. Where is Joshua of Nazareth?”

  He tightened his grip and Ezra gasped.

  “He’s in Ginnesar. It’s about an hour and a half down the coast. Oh, please!”

  Matthias opened his hand and let go. Ezra sank to his knees.

  “That’s better. The Lord Caleb told me you were a man who could be trusted to know everyone else’s business. Now go inside and bring me another jar of your disgusting beer.”

  While Ezra was gone, Matthias peered down at the beer that just covered the bottom of his jar. The beer was a compromise, since it did not cloud his mind but seemed to keep at bay his darker thoughts. Yet it was also the abandonment of his own rule about work, and it frightened him. He would have one more jar, which he would drink slowly, and then no more.

  What would happen tomorrow? How many days before he couldn’t stop himself? He would have to finish this job quickly.

  But he had made Ezra afraid, and that eased his despair a little. Ezra feared his wrath the way Matthias feared God’s, and somehow that made God’s seem just a shade less terrible. What would happen, he wondered, if he ever met a man he couldn’t make afraid?

  * * *

  Noah woke before sunrise and, since no one at the inn was awake, did not wait for breakfast. When he went outside he found there was just enough light to allow him to see, and thus he reached Capernaum only a little after full daybreak.

  He did not go into the center of the village, but left the road to follow the shoreline. The fishermen were just preparing to launch their boats. He found Simon’s house and knocked on the door. Simon’s wife stared at him, apparently trying to recall his face, and then she smiled.

  “You’re the Master’s cousin,” she announced, as if she expected Noah would be grateful for this information.

  “Can you tell me where I might find Joshua?”

  “Gone—he and my man both. Left day before yesterday.”

  “Do you know where they were headed?”

  “Down the coast, and then inland.” She smiled again, seemingly pleased with the thought. “Spreading the Word. They’ll be in Ginnesar for the next few days. Lots of friends in Ginnesar. But they need to be fortified from time to time, or they’ll slide back into sin.”

  Simon’s wife, like her husband, was solidly framed, but unlike him, she seemed gifted with perfect confidence in herself. Noah guessed she would have made the better apostle.

  “Thank you.”

  Ginnesar, he knew, was just a walk down the beach. But he was hungry. He decided to go into town and buy breakfast.

  Noah did not go to Ezra because he knew from Deborah that Ezra was not to be trusted. But there was no shortage of stalls open to sell a workman some bread and fennel. Noah did a little better and managed a piece of fish as well.

  He was across the square from Ezra’s tavern, just inside one of the streets that led back down to the shore, and that accident of positioning probably saved his life. For a man came out through Ezra’s door, a big man, who glanced about with the bored expression that meant he had just awakened, walked about a little, and then threw himself into a chair. He had a face that looked as if it had been chiseled from iron, but Noah had never seen it before. It was, rather, something in the way he moved that made him instantly recognizable. Noah could recall the shadowy figure walking away from him as he lay bleeding and breathless that night on the road to Sepphoris.

  “You are Noah, the ironsmith?” He would remember the sound of that voice to his last day.

  Leaving Capernaum suddenly seemed an excellent idea.

  He followed the shoreline for over an hour, staying on the bluffs above the beaches, hardly noticing anything except the twenty or thirty feet of trail in front of him. Fear concentrated his attention wonderfully.

  He would find Joshua, tell him what he had come to tell him, and then disappear. He would hire the first boat he could find and sail for Tiberias, where he could lose himself in the crowds on the road to Sepphoris.

  But then what? In Sepphoris he would be easier to find. Deborah was there. He could not lead this brute to his wife.

  Where could he go? Damascus? The Greek islands? Spain? And do what there? Spend the remainder of his life waiting for someone to come?

  Could he somehow contrive to kill this man? Noah remembered the precision with which he had been beaten—enough to insure that the message was understood, but not enough to maim him. Just bruises, no broken bones. This was a man who understood violence, the way Noah himself understood iron and fire. What chance would he have against such a man?

  Could he bring himself to kill anyone, even in self-defense? He was by no means sure, and it seemed the wrong time to put the question to a practical test.

  So, by the time he reached Ginnesar he had resolved nothing. He stumbled into the village like a man in a trance.

  Fortunately, he had no trouble finding Joshua. He simply asked the first person he met and was directed to a house at the western edge of the village. Joshua was in the front yard, crouched over, surrounded by five or six little children.

  When he came nearer, he saw that Joshua had a stick in his hand and was drawing figures in the dirt. He could hear his voice. He was naming the letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

  Then Joshua glanced up and saw Noah.

  “That is enough for today, children,” he said, and straightened up.

  The children remained, clinging to his robes.

  “Go and play,” he told them. “God loves you.”

  Reluctantly, they departed. Joshua stepped forward and embraced his cousin.

  “Has Deborah forgiven me?” he asked, only half in jest.

  “For what?”

  “For missing your wedding.”

  “There is very little Deborah would not forgive you. She sends you her love.”

  The expression on Joshua’s face darkened just a shade.

  “You bring bad news,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell it to me.”

  “Your father is dead.”

  “When?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Four days…” Joshua seemed to consider the length of time significant.

  For a moment Noah thought Joshua would weep, but then his mood shifted, as if he had withdrawn into some secret place in his soul.

  “The chosen of God are my family. Father rejected both my message and me.”

  “Your mother told me that the last words he uttered were a prayer that God might keep you safe.”

  This was too much, even for God’s prophet. Joshua began to say something. He opened his mouth, but
the words died on his tongue. All at once he raised his hands, as if fending off a blow.

  Then he simply turned and walked away.

  “There is more that you must know,” Noah called after him, but, without turning around, Joshua raised his arm and made a gesture like swatting at a fly.

  “Not now,” he said, in a choked voice.

  Noah found himself alone in the empty yard of an empty house.

  “I found you, ironsmith!”

  Suddenly he was on his knees, even before he realized that he had been struck from behind. His kidney felt as if it would burst.

  Slowly the man circled around to face him, staying just beyond Noah’s reach. He was bigger up close. Noah forced himself to raise his eyes to the man’s face, but he had to arch his back painfully. The eyes that stared down at him were ferocious.

  “You ran a good race, but it ends here,” the man said.

  “Who are you and what do you want of me?”

  “Only your life.”

  The man drew his sword, which came out of its scabbard with a slow hiss. Noah, sure that his last moment was upon him, began to whisper the Prayer for the Dead.

  “Only his life?”

  The voice was Joshua’s. Something had brought him back. He stood not two paces behind Noah’s attacker.

  The man turned to face him. But Joshua merely smiled and raised his arms to shoulder height, as if to say, “Strike where you will.”

  “Joshua, get out of here, or he will kill us both,” Noah cried, his voice hardly more than a croak. But Joshua seemed not to hear. He never took his eyes from the big man’s face.

  “Do you imagine you are safe to do these things?” Joshua asked, almost mockingly. “Do you think that your Father, Who hears every beat of your heart, is too blind to see the blood you would spill?”

  “My father is dead,” the man growled. But he did not strike.

  “Your Father is alive, and always has lived, and will live forever. For your Father is God, Who sees you now and weeps for the evil in your heart. Do you not feel His sorrow? Can you not feel His urging? Turn aside from your intent, and be forgiven.”