The Ironsmith

by Nicholas Guild

  Eventually she washed and dressed. As she was not sated, she was tempted to go visit her lover—soon to be her third husband—but she decided against it. At this stage, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. She would remain in the palace today and pretend to be her lord’s devoted wife.

  The idea made her laugh. All at once she felt quite gay. She wanted to dance, and actually took a few steps before she heard a knock on the door.

  It was one of the pages, a boy of perhaps fourteen, and still frightened. He bowed very low and seemed on the verge of running away, until she smiled at him.

  “Pardon me, my lady, but there is a man at the front gate. He looks like a beggar, but he insists he must see the Lord Caleb. I thought it best…”

  “And you were right.” She smiled again. It was like teasing a kitten. “The Lord Caleb is out for the day, but I will see him.”

  Why not? she thought. It would give her something to do.

  The beggar at the gate was indeed unkempt and dirty, but his sandals gave evidence of once having been quite elegant and, indeed, he was no worse than many of the pilgrims one saw in the streets.

  His eyes, though, as he huddled beside one of the gateway pillars, had a haunted look, as if he lived under sentence of death.

  “The Lord Caleb is not here,” she said, her voice sweetly understanding. “I am his wife. Will you tell me your name.”

  “My name?” He made a sound like despairing laughter, which it was not quite. “I am as nameless as the dead.”

  “But even the dead had names once. What was yours?”

  “Judah. Judah bar Isaac. But I am not he now.”

  Michal was beginning to suspect that this man was a little mad, and the mad were capable of anything. Nevertheless, as courage was her only virtue, she knelt down beside him and touched his hair.

  She knew the effect she had on men, and this one was no different.

  “What is your business with my husband?” she asked. “You may speak freely. He has no secrets from me.”

  “He is himself the most terrible of secrets.”

  “But not from me.”

  He shook his head. Yes, this man had his secrets too. But he was not mad, only terrified of what he carried in his heart. He wanted to tell her everything—she knew this by instinct. And she suspected that what he had to say would be worth the trouble of finding out.

  “We will talk later,” she told him, making the words like a caress.

  Then she stood up and turned to the page who had accompanied her.

  “Clean him up and feed him,” she said. “Be sure that he has some wine, and then bring him to me. Speak of this to no one. Do you understand?”

  She gave the page three silver coins and let her fingers linger on his open palm as she gave them. She would have nothing to fear from him.

  Fortunately, the Tetrarch had not yet arrived from Tiberias, so, except for servants, the palace was almost deserted. Michal waited in the garden, kept company by the tinkling of a fountain. It was more private there than inside, where someone could be listening behind any door.

  In a little less than an hour, the page brought Judah bar Isaac to where she was sitting on a marble bench. She smiled at him, and the page left.

  “Please, sit down here beside me.”

  Judah hesitated and then sat down. His hair was still wet from the bath, and his damp tunic clung to his arms. The calluses on his hands, she noticed, looked as if they had only recently been acquired. She was sure he was no peasant.

  It was a small bench, and their knees were almost touching.

  “Now. Tell me, what you would have of my husband?”

  “I want nothing of him. He told me to find him when I reached Jerusalem. I have done that. I have done everything he has asked of me.”

  “Are you afraid of him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Why are you afraid?”

  “Because he is God’s terrible vengeance.”

  She could see it in his eyes, a fear that went beyond the fear of death. It was almost past belief, but it was true. Her husband, who in the privacy of her heart she had always despised, had so filled this man with terror that there was hardly anything else in him.

  “The Lord Caleb has been cruel to you,” she said. “He is an evil man.”

  “You are his wife and you understand nothing?” His eyes were wild, and he reached up to run his fingers through his hair, as if to keep his head from separating itself from his neck. “He is God’s instrument, and no man may judge God. God has chosen to destroy His own prophet, to still His own voice in the world, and men cannot say it is good or evil. Men can only close their eyes and wish for death.”

  “You need to sleep.”

  “I dread sleep. I dread my dreams.”

  Michal stood up and held out her hand, which Judah bar Isaac, forsaken by God, instinctively took.

  “I will give you something,” she said. “You will sleep and you will not dream.”

  “Is it death?” he asked her, in a voice that mingled dread and hope.

  “No, it is not death. But you will sleep.”

  She summoned the page, who had been waiting in a hallway, and told him to take their visitor to an unused bedroom and to wait there with him until she came.

  She would give this Judah a cup of wine into which would be mixed a few drops of a drug she used sometimes herself, an extract from the leaves of the blue lotus. It was a lie that he would not dream. He would have strange and wonderful dreams, and when he awoke, their conversation in the garden would have become so confused with those dreams that he would not know where the dreams ended and waking began.

  And then she would have a story for the Lord Eleazar that would make him wonder.

  40

  “I’m going to win it all back.” Caleb’s own words haunted him. He could say what he liked to Michal—no man is under oath in bed—but in the bright light of day he didn’t know if he believed it.

  That priest, with his anxious eyes, had been his best hope. He could not go to the Romans without the Temple’s at least tacit consent, and Joshua was unlikely to attract their attention on his own. Besides, it would be dangerous to arrest a preacher, even a Galilean one, in public. That by itself might start a riot. It had to be done quietly.

  And the Romans did not know the city. Besides, they were barbarians, intoxicated with their own power. They would turn Joshua’s capture into a spectacle.

  There was no escaping it. Caleb could see no other way. He needed the Temple and the Temple refused to listen.

  That priest, that wretched priest …

  He had left the Tetrarch’s palace just after first light and had wandered aimlessly through the streets. But in Jerusalem all streets seemed to lead to the Temple, so by midmorning he found himself on the edge of the vast plaza south of the Temple gates. He had only to glance up to see the soldiers patrolling the walls.

  Roman soldiers, constantly reminding everyone of their power, their absolute authority over a subject people. Roman soldiers, not even Temple guards.…

  Then Caleb remembered something. He had a cousin, a childhood friend, in the Temple guards. Gideon had always been a troublemaker.

  And a troublemaker was precisely what he needed.

  * * *

  Caleb had sent a note. Gideon bar Josiah was the only member of his family with whom Caleb had remained in even sporadic contact over the years of his exile. Yet, as he sat in a tavern nervously sipping at a cup of mediocre wine, he wondered if Gideon might not find it inconvenient to appear.

  He need not have worried. At the appointed time, a strongly built, rather swaggering figure came through the door. He glanced about and, seeing Caleb, grinned. His one concession to his cousin’s outcast status was that he wore ordinary clothes rather than his uniform as a captain of the Temple guard.

  Caleb stood and the two men embraced.

  “It has been so long since I’ve been here, I had trouble remembering the way,�
� Gideon said, after he had sat down. He looked around him expectantly, and then laughed. “It’s just another wineshop now, but the times we had here!”

  “It was always ‘just another wineshop’ at this hour. The whores never showed up until after sunset.”

  “That’s right. I remember now.”

  Gideon smiled, flashing his large, white teeth. He had the arrogant confidence of an athlete, and he was handsome, with a strong face set off by glistening, curly black hair, which he wore long, and eyes of almost feminine softness. The women had always loved him, and he had always returned the compliment.

  “You look prosperous,” he went on. “How is that bitch you married?”

  Caleb lifted his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Still exactly the same. How is Edna?”

  “She’s pregnant again. This will make five.”

  It was obviously not a subject which held much interest for Gideon, so he tasted his wine and made a face.

  “Some things never change,” he said, his expression implying that the observation could be applied to more than the questionable quality of the wine.

  “And some things do.”

  They could both laugh. They had not seen each other in eight years, but time seemed to have stopped. In each other’s company, they were young again, hardly out of boyhood, and filled with mischief.

  Their conversation wandered comfortably over their shared past and then drifted into the present, by way of Caleb’s exile.

  “What have you been doing with yourself in Galilee?” Gideon asked him. “I can’t imagine you turning farmer.”

  “Well, I never actually saw the farm. I sold it as soon as I reached Tiberias.”

  It was a great joke, and their laughter was loud enough that a few people turned their heads.

  “Then what did you do to keep from starving?”

  “I entered the service of the Tetrarch. Antipas is not a bad old fellow, and he likes me. I keep his enemies frightened.”

  “And would those enemies possibly have included a certain lunatic known to the mob as John the Baptist?”

  “I arrested him, and I ordered his execution.”

  Gideon was visibly impressed, but lest this be too obvious, he merely shrugged.

  “Well, were that generally known, it would make you very popular in certain quarters. The Temple did not love him. The priests believe that only they can speak for God.”

  “He had disciples,” Caleb said casually, his attention apparently absorbed by a close study of the rim of his wine cup. “They preach his message of sedition. One of them is presently on his way to Jerusalem.”

  “Is that why you are here, after all this time?”

  “Yes.” Caleb smiled thinly. “I was wondering if you could help me deal with him.”

  “And how do I benefit from helping an old friend?”

  “You make the arrest. If I know you, your reputation with the Temple authorities could probably use a little polishing.”

  “That always.”

  “Good. Then you get the credit while I supply the money and the witness. The priests will turn him over to the Romans, and the Romans will crucify him. The Romans won’t mind one more—I hear they crucify people by the score, all over the country.”

  “But the Romans won’t crucify him just for following the Baptist. They won’t care.”

  “Then the charge will have to be insurrection. During the Passover, when the city is bursting with people, they won’t be fussy. What would do?”

  Gideon had to think. His was not an agile mind, but his conclusions were generally sound.

  “If he claimed to be king of the Jews. If he claimed Davidic descent. That sort of thing. And, of course, the mob cheering him, ready to riot at his merest word. It would take a public demonstration to get the Romans to notice.”

  “And perhaps not even that would be enough?”

  “Perhaps not. It is always wise to prepare them for these things.”

  “And how would we do that?”

  Gideon leaned back in his chair and let his eyes wander up to the ceiling.

  “I have a friend—an acquaintance, really—a centurion in one of the legions. He likes to live beyond his means, so he’s always sniffing for money. He can arrange for certain events to be witnessed and properly reported.”

  “What about Pilatus? Will he be a problem?”

  “Oh, no.” The idea struck Gideon as so ludicrous that he laughed. “Pilatus can be counted on to condemn anyone brought before him. He’s a great believer in crucifixions as a remedy for public discontent. That one is a brute, even by Roman standards.”

  “Is your centurion in the city?”

  “Unless he’s died or been transferred, yes. The legions have been in barracks for two days.”

  “Then I would like to meet him.”

  “You will.”

  “How will we manage the demonstration?”

  “Nothing could be easier.”

  Gideon smiled in an unpleasant way. He also was a brute. When they were children, it was always Gideon who earned the cruelest thrashings, which perhaps had only made a bad nature worse.

  “All that is required,” he went on, “is to position twenty or thirty men in the crowd. When your holy man enters the city, they will begin to shout, ‘The anointed one! The anointed one! Our king! Our king!’ The mob, which during the Passover is always half mad with excitement, will take up the cry. Do you know when he will arrive and what gate he will use?”

  “I am having him watched.”

  “By the way, what is his name?”

  “Joshua bar Joseph.”

  Gideon shook his head. “I have never heard of him.”

  * * *

  It was almost evening before they parted. Gideon had wanted to go prowling, just for old times’ sake, but Caleb hadn’t been in the mood.

  In the most offhand way, Caleb had learned that his father had died four months before.

  “Didn’t anyone write you?” Gideon had asked.

  “No. They wouldn’t have known where to send the letter. Besides…”

  Gideon had shrugged and changed the subject.

  So Caleb was in a reflective and faintly melancholy mood when he returned to his rooms in the Tetrarch’s palace. He briefly considered a letter to his mother, and even wrote a few lines, before remembering that he had never liked his mother and felt no temptation to see her again.

  It occurred to Caleb that Michal, who lately was much in the city, must also have heard that his father was dead and had not seen fit to tell him. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to upset him. More likely, she hadn’t thought it important enough to mention, or it had slipped her mind.

  41

  At midday there was an almost inaudible tapping on the door of the Lord Eleazar’s study.

  “Come.”

  The door opened and a small, middle-aged woman named Talitha stepped over the threshold. She seemed hesitant to come further into the room.

  Eleazar smiled and made a gesture with his right hand, as if drawing her toward him.

  “My lord,” she said quietly, making a low bow, “the Lady Michal sent me.”

  “Then perhaps you should shut the door.”

  Talitha was a remarkable woman. When Eleazar had discovered her, she was in rags, sitting outside the Temple reciting Torah for copper coins.

  “And the people complained in the hearing of the Lord about their misfortunes; and when the Lord heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them.…”

  Eleazar had found her performance fascinating. She seemed to have all five scrolls committed to memory, plus the Prophets and many of the Psalms. She was then in her middle twenties, quite plain, and trying to nurse a baby with breasts that had long since dried up. The child’s father was unknown, even to her.

  “Where did you learn this?” he had asked her.

  “In the prayer house, my lord, when I was a girl.”

  “When did you leave home?”
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  “When I was sixteen, my lord. My father lost his farm and could not keep me.”

  “Can you read?”

  “No, my lord.”

  How had she lived all those years? As a beggar at first, then as a prostitute. She was one of those for whom the world had no place, so naturally her wanderings had led her to Jerusalem. Finally, after she had found herself with child, and her pitiful condition rendered her beneath the attention of even the poorest of men, she had settled herself by the Temple gate and returned to begging. Each morning she would begin with God’s creation of the world and recite as long as anyone would listen. The pious would give her a few gerah and pass on.

  Eleazar had her brought to his house, where she and her infant son were fed and washed. Then he listened to her recite, which she did for four hours, stopping only now and then for a sip of water. If she made a mistake, Eleazar did not catch it.

  “Was your father a scholar?”

  “No, my lord. He was a poor farmer.”

  “Then how is it you can do this?”

  “I just remember things.”

  Finally he took down a scroll, a history of the Maccabees, which he was quite sure could not have been known to her, and read her a long passage, after which he invited her to recall what she could. She repeated it all faithfully.

  But when he asked her a question about its content, she could not answer. Then he asked her, in Hebrew, “In what village were you born?” and again she could not answer.

  Then he recited to her part of an oration of Isocrates he had memorized as a schoolboy, deliberately transposing the first two sentences. She repeated it, including the error.

  She could reproduce faithfully anything she heard, even if she did not understand the tongue in which it was spoken. It was becoming clear to Eleazar that a woman possessing such a talent would not be without her uses.

  That had been ten years ago. Eleazar took her into his household and had her trained as a housemaid, and he saw to it that her son was educated. Talitha was happy. To be a servant in a rich man’s house was more than she had ever dreamed of. She had her son, and one day he would be a scribe. She worshipped her master and would have done anything he asked.