“There is no forgiveness.”
The man raised his sword, as if in warning. Noah saw that the point, which was no more than a span from Joshua’s face, seemed to tremble slightly in the air.
“There is always forgiveness,” Joshua said calmly. “No man is beyond God’s mercy. You have turned away from Him, but He has not turned away from you. You are still His son. He still loves you and yearns for your return to righteousness. His heart is open to receive you.”
Then, slowly but deliberately, he reached up with his right hand and touched the point of the sword with his finger. The big man, who was even taller than Joshua, seemed frozen.
Slowly, Joshua lowered his hand, and his finger carried the point of the sword down with it. The arm that held the sword, raised to do murder, sank as if of its own weight.
“Do not be afraid, my son. God loves you and will redeem you. Your sins are forgiven.”
The murderer’s hand opened, and the sword dropped to the ground.
By then Noah had managed to find his feet, but, like one in the presence of a mystery, he too had lost the will to action. He could only watch in awed fascination.
This man who, only a moment before, had been about to steal his life from him, now lowered his eyes and stared at his sword lying useless on the ground. Then he turned to Noah, his face mirroring his confusion of mind, as if begging him for some explanation.
The strength seemed to ebb from him and he sank to his knees. He covered his face with his hands and began to sob.
Joshua calmly picked up the fallen sword and, still holding it, he walked around and knelt before the weeping murderer. He put his left hand on the man’s head.
“Kill me,” the man said. “My life is a burden to me.”
Joshua drove the point of the sword into the ground. Then he took the man’s hands in his own and gently pulled them away from his face.
“God has forsaken me.”
“God does not forsake us,” Joshua answered, his voice low, as if speaking to a frightened child. “We forsake ourselves. We lose our way and wander into evil, but the path back to God is always open to us. We have only to repent, to cast off sin like a soiled cloak, and God welcomes us back. A father forgives his son, and God is our Father.”
“God will not forgive me. I killed my father.”
“God forgives all sins. We have but to ask.”
“I have killed many times. I have done terrible things. I cannot sleep at night. The things I have done haunt my dreams.”
“Your sins trouble you. Cast them off. God will cleanse your heart and set you free.”
“God has cursed me for my crimes.”
“You have cursed yourself. Now lift the curse. What is your name?”
“Matthias.”
“‘Gift of God.’ Now, accept God’s gift of your life. Do you repent of your sins?”
“I repent. I do repent.”
“Then pray with me.”
“I cannot pray.” Matthias’s voice was like a cry of pain. “God has made the words die in my throat.”
“Then repeat my words, and God will hear us both. ‘Father who is in heaven.’”
“Father who is in heaven.”
“Sacred is the name of God.”
“Sacred is the name of God.”
“May Your will be done on earth.”
“May Your will be done on earth.”
“Forgive us our sins.”
“Forgive—I can’t.” With a child’s feeling of helplessness, Matthias shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You can. You have merely to repeat my words. ‘Forgive us our sins.’”
“Forgive us our sins.”
“As we forgive those who sin against us.”
“Please, God…” And then, slowly, haltingly, “As we forgive those who sin against us.”
Noah, who was witness to it all, could only shake his head in wonder. He remembered Joshua’s dead father, who had despaired of his son, saying, “How can he be a prophet? The prophets of old performed miracles.”
Now, Joseph, you have your answer, Noah thought. Is it not miracle enough to turn a heart of stone back into living flesh?
* * *
It was as if Matthias had been born all over again, and as a mother tends her newborn child, so Joshua stayed crouched on the ground beside Matthias, who seemed as helpless as any infant and was in a state of confusion the newly born are hopefully spared.
Repentance led to hope, and hope, it seemed, was the parent of fear. Matthias wept and prayed and was in terror of God’s just wrath as he struggled to accept the idea that he could ever find forgiveness. All the time, Joshua remained with him, speaking to him in a low voice, his hand on the huge man’s shoulder that he might not feel himself abandoned.
And as a woman may labor for hours giving birth, so Joshua slowly helped this murderer, this worst of men, to be reconciled with God and with himself.
In the late afternoon Matthias, exhausted by his struggle, curled up on the bare ground and went to sleep. Then Joshua, his knees stiff, stood up and stretched like a man just waking.
“I need to piss,” he said to Noah, the only witness to this act of God’s grace. “And then I think I’ll take a walk. Will you watch him for me?”
“Of course.”
Joshua stooped over to pick up Matthias’s sword from where it lay in the dirt, and handed it to Noah.
“Best kept out of the hands of children,” he said, and walked away.
Out of professional curiosity, Noah examined the blade and decided it was a fine piece of work. He found the maker’s mark on the inside of the guard and was pleased to discover that he recognized it. “Suhis of Damascus,” he murmured to himself. “Well, the Syrians have always made excellent weapons.”
Not knowing what else to do with it, he was still holding the sword two hours later, when Matthias woke up.
“Where is he?” he asked, addressing no one in particular—he seemed unaware of Noah’s presence. He seemed frightened.
“He has gone for a walk,” Noah answered. “He’ll be back.”
Matthias’s eyes came to rest on the sword in Noah’s hand.
“If you mean to kill me, I wouldn’t blame you,” he said.
At first Noah didn’t know what he was talking about, and then he remembered. He looked down at the sword blade, and then set it down on a bench beside the door to the house.
“I wouldn’t know how,” he said, surprised at his own anger. Then it occurred to him that his reaction was more one of fear than of anger.
“Then you are blessed,” Matthias answered, and then shook his head. “You take a man’s life, it changes everything. I will never be innocent again.”
His sincerity was so obvious that Noah could not restrain a feeling of pity.
“I’ll get you something to eat.”
He picked up the sword again and carried it with him into the house, where he hid it under a pile of kindling.
The house was empty, but Noah found a pot of cold beans that only needed heating up, and there was bread and a few jars of beer. He made a fire, and in a few minutes he was able to go back outside carrying two plates of food and one of the jars.
They sat together on a bench beside the door. Matthias did the food justice, but he would not touch the beer.
“Why not?” Noah asked him.
“Because when I drink it is to kill thought. I drink until I am too drunk even to dream.”
“A man can choose how much he drinks,” Noah explained patiently, as if such an idea might never have occurred to this man. “Besides, in this instance you are perfectly safe, as there are only two jars of beer and I mean to claim my share.”
Matthias laughed and, after a moment’s hesitation, raised the jar to his lips.
“I won’t be tempted,” he said. “It’s not very good beer.”
Probably it had been meant as a jest, but Noah could not bring himself to laugh. It seemed so odd to be sharing a meal
with someone who, only hours before, had intended to kill him.
They ate in silence for a time, and then Matthias said, “I am sorry I hit you.”
“Which time?”
Matthias seemed confused.
“Which time that you hit me are you sorry for? Today, or on the road from Nazareth? In the dark.”
“Both times. And I am sorry I tried to kill you.”
“Well then, we’ll forget about it. What are you going to do about Caleb?”
“You know about him?”
“Yes. He becomes vindictive when people don’t do what he wants.”
Matthias stared into the distance, considering this. He did not seem stupid, and no one would know better than he what Caleb was capable of.
Finally, he shrugged.
“If he has me killed, so be it. I will stay with the Master.”
“His name is Joshua.”
“I know.”
Joshua came back from his walk and, seeing the two of them sitting together, raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment.
“Then all is well between you?”
“So it would seem.” Noah stood up. “We must talk.”
“About my father?”
“No. About something else.”
“Then come inside.” Joshua glanced at Matthias. “You come as well. We have no secrets here.”
Noah nodded his agreement. “I think it likely he is intimately concerned.”
They went into the house and sat down around a rough wooden table. Joshua found a lamp and lit it.
“Well then, what is it?” he asked.
“You have a spy in your midst. Judah bar Isaac.”
Both of them observed the sudden change in Matthias’s face but pretended to ignore it.
Noah then described his interview with the Lord Eleazar, and all that he had learned in Tiberias. “How Judah got into Caleb’s hands, I have no idea. He is suspected of having fled after killing a prostitute.”
“I did that,” Matthias said suddenly. “I kidnapped Judah, on the Lord Caleb’s orders. The girl drugged his wine, and I killed her to keep her from talking.”
For a moment no one could say anything, and then Joshua touched him on the hand.
“Even for this you have been forgiven, my son. Now tell us what you know of this matter.”
Matthias described everything he had done. “Judah was asleep the whole way to Sepphoris. He must have awakened in his cell. The Lord Caleb has a taste for such things. He likes to put a man’s mind in chains.”
“And then, after a few months in Caleb’s hands,” Noah said, glancing at Joshua, “Judah comes to you, claiming to have lost all his money and to have taken this as a sign from God.”
Joshua listened to all this and then, finally, shook his head.
“I have no doubt that what you say is true. But a man can change.”
“Deborah saw him in Sepphoris, talking to Caleb,” said Noah. “He fears Caleb more than death.”
“What would you have me do?” Joshua asked.
“Send him away.” Noah could hardly believe that the suggestion needed to be made. “Part with him, or the day will come when he will betray you.”
“If I do that, if I turn my back to him, what chance will he have?”
“What chance will you have if you do not?”
“God has sent me to bring His children back to Him.” Joshua made a gesture with his left hand, which suggested his helplessness in the face of this obligation. “I cannot save Judah by abandoning him. I have no choice but to help him work out his salvation.”
Noah could only sigh with exasperation. It seemed that reasoning with God’s prophet was a hopeless business.
“Then you are a dead man.”
38
On this trip to Jerusalem, Eleazar could not hide from himself the fact that he had brought the politician in him along. He had no choice.
Almost the last person he had seen in Sepphoris was the ironsmith, who had left a note at the house of Kenan bar Dathan requesting an audience. They had met there the next day, and Noah had astonished him by revealing not only the identity of Caleb’s released prisoner but also a precise history of his kidnapping and of his movements since being set free.
“I will not inquire how you discovered all this,” Eleazar had told him, “but from the nature of your information, you clearly have a source very close to my servant Caleb.”
Unless he was mistaken, Noah managed an almost imperceptible nod.
“But I will ask if you know anything of this Judah’s background,” Eleazar continued.
“He seems to be of a Levite family. He had been amply provided for, but he is in disgrace.”
“And naturally you do not know what his motives might be.”
“My lord, I have no window into the man’s heart,” Noah told him, with perhaps just a touch of asperity. “But you would know better than I what pressures can be brought to bear on one in the Tetrarch’s prisons. Caleb, whom you are pleased to call your servant, had several months in which to bend Judah to his will.”
“And your cousin the prophet is aware of what you have told me?”
“Oh yes. But he seeks the man’s redemption.”
“Is he stupid, this cousin of yours?”
“No, my lord. His views on the matter are not so narrow as yours or mine. He is a true servant of God.”
“And you have come to believe that?”
“Yes, my lord. I have seen things the sight of which you have been spared.”
Eleazar had long since observed that Noah’s deference was a mask for what, in another man, the Tetrarch’s First Minister would have regarded as insolence. It was one of the reasons he both liked and trusted the ironsmith and was inclined to give him his way.
The Lord Eleazar smiled thinly.
“And what would you recommend I do about this Judah bar Isaac?”
“Recommend?” Noah shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I would not dream of such a presumption.”
In other words, he would leave the First Minister to ponder the matter out for himself.
* * *
Eleazar’s initial impulse was to have Judah bar Isaac arrested, but he quickly dismissed the idea. If Caleb had some dark design, it was better to leave things as they were and hope the fool would overstep himself.
Noah’s information about the mysterious prisoner was interesting, but its real usefulness lay in the future.
It was to prepare that future that Eleazar had come to Jerusalem a full two weeks before the Passover. Because Caleb’s wife had family in Jerusalem—family who seemed more forgiving of scandal than Caleb’s had proved to be. Or perhaps they were merely indifferent. From his knowledge of them, Eleazar was inclined to that view. In any case, Michal had been much with them of late.
By comparison with Tiberias, or even Sepphoris, Jerusalem was not a place in which a woman alone could find much amusement. The priesthood dominated social life, and everyone knew about Michal’s divorce and almost instant remarriage—and could be counted on to draw the obvious conclusions. Michal would be an outcast in Jerusalem.
Yet here she was. She spent almost as much time in Jerusalem and she had previously in Tiberias. One could not help but wonder why.
Except, of course, that one knew.
There had long been rumors, the accuracy of which Eleazar had gone to some trouble to establish, about Michal and a certain Nahshon bar Elhanan, a handsome, wealthy, and not very bright young man who spoke Greek as his first language and whose family, all conveniently dead, came from Caesarea. He had arrived in Tiberias on a visit of pleasure two years previous and had never returned home. After Michal’s dismissal from court, he had suddenly moved to Jerusalem.
They had not been discreet. Eleazar had witnesses to their meetings. He had the testimony of Nahshon’s servants that Michal had, on several occasions, spent the night in his house.
He wondered if Caleb didn’t possess a similar collection of evidence. Nahshon
had to be stupid to lay with the wife of so dangerous a man.
Thus, his first morning in Jerusalem, before he began his customary round of social calls, even before he saw his son, Eleazar bar Zadok waited in the reception hall of the house of Michal’s mother.
“I regret that the mistress is not yet awake,” a servant told him—a perfumed, prancing young man with an elegantly cut beard, who smiled and smirked as if privy to all the family secrets, which was possibly the case.
“I see no occasion to disturb the Lady Rahab,” Eleazar told him, “particularly since it is her daughter, the Lady Michal, I wish to see.”
The servant glanced aside, as if astonished that anyone could be so boorish, and then smiled.
“I am afraid the Lady Michal is also still asleep.”
“Then wake her.”
“Alas, it would prove impossible.…”
“Hardly impossible. Wake her. Be good enough to inform her that the Lord Eleazar wishes a private word.”
For a moment the servant seemed confused. Then he appeared to be preparing to say something, but exactly what would forever remain a mystery.
“Be about your business, boy.”
Eleazar wandered into one of the sitting rooms and found a chair. He anticipated a long wait, since, in his experience, women of questionable reputations tended to be most particular about their appearance.
He was happily disappointed, however. Not even a quarter of an hour had passed when the Lady Michal swept into the room. Her hair was a trifle disarrayed, which only added a becoming suggestion of voluptuousness to her face.
For an instant, Eleazar wondered what it must be like to make love to such a woman. Rather like handling a viper with a pretty skin, he decided.
“My lord,” she said breathlessly, “you do me honor.”
Eleazar did not rise from his chair. Neither did he smile.
“Fortunately, my lady, your honor is not my concern. I am here on business, so please be seated.”
The change in her expression was instantaneous, but she said nothing. Instead, she sat down in the chair to which Eleazar directed her with a languid gesture.
Was she frightened? It was difficult to know. Her emotions, perhaps, were in a state of precarious balance, capable of being tipped in any direction.
The Ironsmith Page 35