“Yes. That day has lived in my memory ever since.”
“Then you will be able to tell me. What were his last words?”
For a moment Noah was silent. He had never revealed to anyone the despair that had gripped Joshua in his final moments. It would have seemed a betrayal.
“‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’” he answered, in Aramaic.
“What does that mean?”
“He was asking for a drink of water.”
Marcus’s disappointment was palpable. He didn’t know what to say, so he changed the subject.
“What was he like when you knew him?”
“When I knew him?” Noah shrugged, and poured himself another cup of wine. “That would be his whole life, for we were born only a few days apart. We learned our letters together—he was cleverer than I. He loved God. It was a love that left little room for anyone else.”
“Except for Rachel,” he could have added, but he did not. It seemed to him that these people who called his childhood companion the Son of God had no claim to know the man of flesh and blood that Joshua had been, with his infirmities and his private sorrows.
Instead, Noah pointed to a line of hills, visible to the west over the rooftops of Nazareth. “Those hills are terraced, and covered with grape arbors,” he said. “On a dare, when we were seven years old, Joshua jumped down from one, and broke his arm. He thought God would hold him up. He was mistaken.”
But Marcus the Roman, the follower of Jesus the Christ, did not want to hear about broken arms. He wanted to hear about wondrous signs and miracles.
Noah was not able to satisfy him. “I saw him convert Matthias, which saved my life, but I suppose that was not, strictly speaking, a miracle. I heard stories from his disciples of miraculous cures, but I never witnessed one. I think he was a man like other men.”
“Then you did not accept his ministry?”
“In the end, no. We only know a true prophet by the truth of his prophecies. It has been more than forty years since Joshua died, and God’s kingdom has never come.”
“Yet forty years is not so long.”
Noah smiled. “Joshua was not as patient as you seem to be.”
“Yet are we not living in the end times? Doesn’t the destruction of the Temple prove that?”
For a long time Noah was not able to speak. His youngest boy, also named Joshua, had gone up to Jerusalem that Passover and had never returned. Noah could only assume that he had been trapped when the Romans laid siege to the city and had perished like so many others. Please God, he had prayed, so many times. Please God I did not curse him when I named him after Joshua. Please God he died a quick death and did not suffer on the cross.
“The Temple was destroyed once before,” Noah said at last, fixing his gaze on this son of conquerors. “By the Babylonians. And now again by the Romans. God is silent.”
“And yet He raised His son from the dead, as a sign to us.”
“Did he?” Noah inquired, as in his mind he saw the fetid pit into which the Romans had thrown Joshua’s corpse. “Did he indeed?”
“Many saw him, so it is said. He appeared to many.”
“He did not appear to me.”
“Why should he?” Marcus was almost angry now. “Why would he have appeared to one who denied him?”
All at once, in memory, Noah was a little boy just able to see the top of the Passover table, and his cousin Joshua grinned at him and then, suddenly, stole a fig and ran away.
Then, an old man again, he began to laugh. It was a hollow, scratchy sound, like coins being rattled in a wooden box. He had to wait until the fit was over before he could answer.
“Why, you ask? Because he would not have been able to resist it.”
* * *
Marcus left unsatisfied. He was on his way to Jerusalem, although it was impossible to say what he expected to find there. Jerusalem was a graveyard.
And Noah was left alone once more, with his wine and his memories.
All he had to do was close his eyes, and Deborah lived again. He could hear the sound of her voice. He could turn over the days of their life together like the pages of a book. He could remember passion, but love was stronger. Love did not die. Love was with him still.
His memories of his wife were a refuge. Better to remember her, a woman full of light, than all the darkness.
“That damned boy!”
Noah couldn’t keep it at bay. It all came flooding back over him—Joshua’s cruel death, his own dead son, the war.
Some things were at a remove. He could remember the feelings they had stirred, but not the things themselves. They were outside his experience.
The war, for instance, had not much touched Galilee. The war had been something far away. After the Romans tired of Antipas and sent him into exile, Galilee was ruled from Caesarea. But the prefects had confidence in the Lord Eleazar, and the people listened to him. He sided with the Romans, and Galilee remained quiet.
Eleazar had died in his bed before the siege of Jerusalem began. He was spared that, at least. And Galilee knew peace.
And now the Temple was a ruin.
But Noah did not have to imagine what had happened to Joshua those forty years ago. He had seen it. He had witnessed the intolerable suffering of that death. And now, whenever he thought of it, he saw Joshua with his son’s face—the son who had been named for him.
Yet, through it all, God had remained silent.
Oh God, Noah had asked, in the privacy of his heart, Why did You not spare Joshua, who loved You as a child loves his father? Why did You not spare Your people? Why did You not spare my son? Why?
But there was never an answer. There was only silence. God had turned His face away.
There was nothing left to do but weep. In his old age, it was God’s silence he could not forgive.
Then suddenly, though his tears, Noah realized that he was praying. The words came to his lips unbidden, almost against his will, for there was no choice. In all of blind creation, it was only to God that men could turn, in the fading hope that He might listen.
“Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe…”
FORGE BOOKS BY NICHOLAS GUILD
Blood Ties
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICHOLAS GUILD was born in Belmont, California, and attended Occidental College and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at Clemson and Ohio State before turning full-time to writing fiction. He has published a dozen novels, several of which were international bestsellers, including The Assyrian, Blood Star, and Angel. Guild now lives in Frederick, Maryland. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
> Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Forge Books by Nicholas Guild
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE IRONSMITH
Copyright © 2016 by Nicholas Guild
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Paul Youll
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-8226-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-8659-9 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466886599
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First Edition: February 2016
The Ironsmith Page 46